RE: Hand counting ballots

[Evan Daniel Ravitz <evan@xxxxxxxx>]

I'm told Canada counts its votes by hand. It was done that way for
hundreds of years everywhere in the world. Why not here and now?

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Evan Ravitz     303 440 6838     evan@xxxxxxxx
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On Fri, 14 Nov 2003, Paul Tiger wrote:

> Better idea. You do the hand count, leave me out of it. It will never work.
> You want an experiment? We can set one up. this is not counting slips of
> paper, this is counting blotches on hundreds of thousands of pieces of
> paper. I bet you that you can't do it. You will come up with different
> totals every time. When you get close to the end and see that it isn't going
> to work out, you will lie to yourself and others about the upcoming total.
>
> Supervise all you want. It can't be done.
> Oh yeah, its against the law too.
>
> paul
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ralph Shnelvar [mailto:ralphs@xxxxxxxxx]
> Sent: Friday, November 14, 2003 3:28 PM
> To: BCV
> Subject: Re: Hand counting ballots
>
> Dear Paul:
>
> On Fri, 14 Nov 2003 13:29:21 -0700, you wrote:
>
> >An interesting concept, since it has checks and balances. However, hand
> >counting of ballots has always proven to be suspect and open to fraud. Get
> >ten people to count the ballots, get ten totals. Is it fraud or is it human
> >error?
> >Now add the DRE count and then the scanned count. Which one do the
> elections
> >officials choose? Averaging is not permitted.
> >
> >Go thunk on that.
>
> You choose the hand count.  It is as simple as that.
>
> If the election is close and/or if there are big discrepancies between the
> hand count and the machine counts then you do a more careful and supervised
> hand count.
>
> _Something_ has to trump and I prefer hand counting.
>
> >
> >Paul Tiger
>
> Ralph
>