3 ms·

That summary is a bit revisionist, so the snark is a bit misplaced. The initial vote count was reported November 8th (the day after voting, which was November

That summary is a bit revisionist, so the snark is a bit misplaced. The initial vote count was reported November 8th (the day after voting, which was November 7th). Since the margin of victory was less than 0.5%, an automatic recount was triggered, which resulted in an even smaller margin. That, in turn, resulted in a month-long lawsuit, while both major parties challenged individual ballots during a manual recount. Challenging individual ballots and the legal process are what drew out final certification of the election. It's not really fair to cite that case an example where either the votes were not counted in 1 day, not counted with little corruption, or not counted fairly accurately (the disputes were over fractions of fractions of a percent of all ballots cast in Florida).

runako 3y ago
> The initial vote count was reported November 8th (the day after voting, which was November 7th). This is immaterial. The State did not consider that number as official, even though it had been widely reported. The official numbers are the only thing that matters. > It's not really fair to cite that case an example where either the votes were not counted in 1 day, not counted with little corruption, or not counted fairly accurately When talking about a legal process, it's pointless to ignore the statutes that govern the certification process (including automatic recounts and challenge windows), or the inevitable legal process around voting. These things happen. That's why election certification is not the day after voting in any state. Certified results are the only results that matter. If it was reasonable to get final results in a day, then certainly there is a state that statutorily requires certification by (say) Thursday or Friday after the Tuesday vote? So which state is it? Keep in mind that the country was much less polarized in 2000 than it is now, so it's entirely likely that paper ballots used in 2024 would see multiple state outcomes that looked like Florida in 2000. In particular, close races like FL in 2000 may depend on ballots from e.g. overseas service members. Those are not required to be received by states until days after Election Day. Without changing the dates service members have to mail their ballots, there's no way to count all the votes until days after the election. > That summary is a bit revisionist, so the snark is a bit misplaced. The "snark" is warranted because the fiasco with paper ballots highlighted in Bush v Gore is a key reason we abandoned paper ballots. EDIT: Also Bush v Gore would not have been "current events" for anybody younger than 35-40, so the reminder is important. (YMMV but I definitely was not following politics when I was in elementary school.)
- daveguy 3y ago
  Another reason your snark is completely misplaced is that punch ballots are not what people generally mean by hand marked paper ballots. The standard for HMPB is pen-marked optically scanned ballots with races and candidates clearly separated and bubbles directly adjacent on the outside edges. The vast majority of states still use HMPB and the vast majority of states use hand marked paper ballots with optical scan and the vast majority have no problem counting ballots [0]. A lot of people opted to mail in ballots in 2020 when they could because of covid concern. Mail-in and drop off ballots shouldn't take much longer to count, but they do because of dumbassery in some states requiring counting on or after election dat. And also vilifying postmark-by causing a delay of approximately 3 days while absentee/mailin ballots are delivered. Postmarking works for official court documents but for some reason "they're stealing our votes!" when you're a losing and shrinking minority. Everyone should be aware that mail-in ballots are going to have a delay and none of the states vote counts are official the day of. That's how we always did it and it worked fine until some asshat decided to attack our elections before they even started. Florida was a hole-punch system that was absolutely terrible. They fixed that. [0] https://ballotpedia.org/Voting_methods_and_equipment_by_state https://ballotpedia.org/Voting_methods_and_equipment_by_stat...
  - runako 3y ago
    This was the claim to which I was responding: > Then we switched away from paper ballots to e-voting You are objecting to claims neither I nor the OP made: > punch ballots are not what people generally mean by hand marked paper ballots In particular, nobody said anything about how the paper ballots were marked. Absolutely agree with your points that there is a concerted effort to make our elections look illegitimate by e.g. not allowing early/absentee ballots to be counted before Election Day, underfunding elections processes, designing elections so that some areas have incredibly long lines on Election Day, etc.
    - daveguy 3y ago
      1) Florida did not switch to e-voting machines. They switched to what most people mean by HMPB - hand marked bubble fill, scanned optically and retained for audits. Most importantly: 2) There is no problem with hand marked paper ballots optically scanned. And those aren't considered e-voting machines where votes are recorded electronically. The whole point of whether hand marked paper is a problem depends on how they are marked (eg NOT punched) and to not acknowledge that is disingenuous. I'm glad we are on the same page with improving efficiencies. Lack of polling places => long lines on election day is particularly egregious.

runako 3y ago

> The initial vote count was reported November 8th (the day after voting, which was November 7th). This is immaterial. The State did not consider that number as official, even though it had been widely reported. The official numbers are the only thing that matters. > It's not really fair to cite that case an example where either the votes were not counted in 1 day, not counted with little corruption, or not counted fairly accurately When talking about a legal process, it's pointless to ignore the statutes that govern the certification process (including automatic recounts and challenge windows), or the inevitable legal process around voting. These things happen. That's why election certification is not the day after voting in any state. Certified results are the only results that matter. If it was reasonable to get final results in a day, then certainly there is a state that statutorily requires certification by (say) Thursday or Friday after the Tuesday vote? So which state is it? Keep in mind that the country was much less polarized in 2000 than it is now, so it's entirely likely that paper ballots used in 2024 would see multiple state outcomes that looked like Florida in 2000. In particular, close races like FL in 2000 may depend on ballots from e.g. overseas service members. Those are not required to be received by states until days after Election Day. Without changing the dates service members have to mail their ballots, there's no way to count all the votes until days after the election. > That summary is a bit revisionist, so the snark is a bit misplaced. The "snark" is warranted because the fiasco with paper ballots highlighted in Bush v Gore is a key reason we abandoned paper ballots. EDIT: Also Bush v Gore would not have been "current events" for anybody younger than 35-40, so the reminder is important. (YMMV but I definitely was not following politics when I was in elementary school.)

daveguy 3y ago
Another reason your snark is completely misplaced is that punch ballots are not what people generally mean by hand marked paper ballots. The standard for HMPB is pen-marked optically scanned ballots with races and candidates clearly separated and bubbles directly adjacent on the outside edges. The vast majority of states still use HMPB and the vast majority of states use hand marked paper ballots with optical scan and the vast majority have no problem counting ballots [0]. A lot of people opted to mail in ballots in 2020 when they could because of covid concern. Mail-in and drop off ballots shouldn't take much longer to count, but they do because of dumbassery in some states requiring counting on or after election dat. And also vilifying postmark-by causing a delay of approximately 3 days while absentee/mailin ballots are delivered. Postmarking works for official court documents but for some reason "they're stealing our votes!" when you're a losing and shrinking minority. Everyone should be aware that mail-in ballots are going to have a delay and none of the states vote counts are official the day of. That's how we always did it and it worked fine until some asshat decided to attack our elections before they even started. Florida was a hole-punch system that was absolutely terrible. They fixed that. [0] https://ballotpedia.org/Voting_methods_and_equipment_by_state https://ballotpedia.org/Voting_methods_and_equipment_by_stat...
- runako 3y ago
  This was the claim to which I was responding: > Then we switched away from paper ballots to e-voting You are objecting to claims neither I nor the OP made: > punch ballots are not what people generally mean by hand marked paper ballots In particular, nobody said anything about how the paper ballots were marked. Absolutely agree with your points that there is a concerted effort to make our elections look illegitimate by e.g. not allowing early/absentee ballots to be counted before Election Day, underfunding elections processes, designing elections so that some areas have incredibly long lines on Election Day, etc.
  - daveguy 3y ago
    1) Florida did not switch to e-voting machines. They switched to what most people mean by HMPB - hand marked bubble fill, scanned optically and retained for audits. Most importantly: 2) There is no problem with hand marked paper ballots optically scanned. And those aren't considered e-voting machines where votes are recorded electronically. The whole point of whether hand marked paper is a problem depends on how they are marked (eg NOT punched) and to not acknowledge that is disingenuous. I'm glad we are on the same page with improving efficiencies. Lack of polling places => long lines on election day is particularly egregious.