I prefer to think in ratios rather than absolute numbers. If the whole country is voting then that’s a lot of votes, but it’s also a lot of manual labor made

I prefer to think in ratios rather than absolute numbers. If the whole country is voting then that’s a lot of votes, but it’s also a lot of manual labor made available to run the vote. A counter can get through 10,000 single issue ballots in a four hour hand count. If an election has 10 issues then, on average, one person can count a thousand votes. One in every thousand people employed for two day’s work every two years doesn’t sound unreasonable, especially when there’s one state or local government employee for every ten voters: https://www.statista.com/statistics/204535/number-of-governmental-employees-in-the-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/204535/number-of-governm...