4 ms·
Philadelphia, Detroit, and a number of other cities are notoriously slow in counting their ballots. This happens every election that I can remember, going back
by jrumbut 6y ago
Philadelphia, Detroit, and a number of other cities are notoriously slow in counting their ballots.
This happens every election that I can remember, going back to 2000.
If I had to guess, the complexity of counting may increase in a non-linear way after a certain number of precincts.
I'm unconvinced the proportions should be consistent at the state level or any level really. There have been GOTV events that have thousands of attendees, then there's the "souls to the polls" event every time, I can't think of a way to slice it where I would be convinced by unbalanced batches.
- rootusrootus 6y ago> If I had to guess, the complexity of counting may increase in a non-linear way after a certain number of precincts. I'd bet that the larger counties, while they have more ballot counting machines, probably don't have proportionally more. Expensive, specialized, maintenance-intensive, etc. Every county needs at least one, but beyond that I doubt there is a huge priority on having excess capacity.
- rightbyte 6y agoBallot counting machines are probably a case of over-automation. The polls station clerks are volunteers and are maybe doing their first election. Setting up a manual process is just way easier then dealing with complex computer reporting systems. As soon as some machine or computer is not cooperating they are stuck. With pen and paper the worst that can happen is that the pen is out of ink.