Fair call, I should have stressed that "system" is more than just marking and counting ballots. Operating a well-run election means staffing polling places wi

Fair call, I should have stressed that "system" is more than just marking and counting ballots. Operating a well-run election means staffing polling places with elections clerks from different parties (or no party) so they act as cross-checks on each other, making sure that spoiled or unused ballots are a) not counted, and b) accounted for, helping random citizens who are at the wrong polling place, or are not on the registry for some reason (registered elsewhere, changed their name, etc.). In the worse cases it means dealing with voters who want to read the ballot aloud to their partner, or camp out in a voting booth for 30-40 minutes, or who are disruptive in some way. To be fair, the last general election here (Bay Area) had 21 races with 43 total significant candidates, plus 12 referendums/measures, for 67 items to count per ballot - this is not a good "count by hand" situation. In the long run what people really want and need is an election system (including voting machines, ballots, voter rolls, polling places, staff) that gives them a sense that their votes count.