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I don't understand why Americans require machines to count. Dumping the ballots into a room and having dozens of people counting them while under the watch of a

by ta1243 1y ago

I don't understand why Americans require machines to count. Dumping the ballots into a room and having dozens of people counting them while under the watch of all sorts of interested parties scales perfectly well. For president you have a piece of paper with two boxes on. You don't even have ranked voting. Mark an X next to one and put it in a ballot box. Works fine everywhere else.

terminalshort 1y ago
That's not how it works everywhere else
- iainmerrick 1y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_voting_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_voting_by_country suggests that centralized electronic counting is somewhat common, electronic voting machines in polling places are uncommon. So I think it's reasonable to say that, to paraphrase the earlier comment, putting an X in a box on a piece of paper is how it's done in most of the world. It's true that the ballots aren't always counted by hand.
  - ta1243 1y ago
    Very few countries do national elections electronically (the ones most subject to interference) electronically. Sure with paper systems you might be able to swing upto say 1% of the vote without being detected (probably more like 0.1%), anything more will involve too many people for a conspiracy to remain. With electronic you can swing 20% without blinking. Scaling is bad when it comes to voting.
    - bilekas 1y ago
      > With electronic you can swing 20% without blinking. You're going to have to give some citations for that because all electronic votes are usually backed by a paper ballot.. I've not heard of 20%~ swing and getting away with it.
  - nobody9999 1y ago
    >So I think it's reasonable to say that, to paraphrase the earlier comment, putting an X in a box on a piece of paper is how it's done in most of the world. >It's true that the ballots aren't always counted by hand. I can't speak for other jurisdictions (although I understand that this is pretty common in the US), but where I live (NY) we do exactly that. Well, instead of marking an 'X', we fill in an oval for each item on the ballot and that paper ballot is then scanned and counted. If there are issues or the vote is very close, as with most places, a recount is done, first by machine and, if necessary, by hand. How is this different from the rest of the world?
bilekas 1y ago
> I don't understand why Americans require machines to count. There's actually nothing wrong with machine counting, I believe it was found to be more accurate also overall less prone to fatigue and mistakes. [0] The real strange thing in the US is the electoral college system for Presidential elections, surely 1 person 1 vote nationwide would make sense. Afterall the President is supposed to represent everyone equally. [0] https://www.npr.org/2022/10/11/1128197774/research-finds-hand-counting-ballots-to-be-less-accurate-and-more-expensive https://www.npr.org/2022/10/11/1128197774/research-finds-han...
- jepj57 1y ago
  It's because we are the United STATES of America.
  - atwrk 1y ago
    That's silly, most modern democracies are organized federally and don't have this issue.
    - dsr_ 1y ago
      Most modern democracies -- that's correct. Only the USA is organized this way. One might consider that later democracies learned from some of our mistakes.
  - wat10000 1y ago
    A popular vote was seriously considered while drafting the Constitution for these United STATES. The founders didn’t seem to think it was a contradiction. They went with the current solution because it’s hard to count a slave as 3/5ths of a person with a national popular vote.
wqaatwt 1y ago
Because American ballots are massive? They vote for everything including the president and local school district board members and everything in between at the same time.
- pmyteh 1y ago
  When there are multiple simultaneous elections happening in the UK you get multiple ballot papers - one per race. You then put them into separate ballot boxes. This obviously doesn't scale elegantly to the kind of ballots that go from President to dog-catcher, but you could certainly separate them into pink, blue, yellow, and white ballots and count in parallel.
  - wqaatwt 1y ago
    Well.. yes it is indeed technically possible to count a large number of paper sheets by hand.
    - ta1243 1y ago
      You don't have to use the same system for the higher risk ballots. A foreign state isn't going to spend millions trying to subvert the vote for the head of "Wyoming School Board 45". When I was at university our student elections were done on computer. 20 years ago. Nobody really cared about them, it was perfectly reasonable, you'd only have to bribe/threaten 3 people to make the result whatever you wanted. If you put the national election in the hands of 3 people though, then you have a major problem.
- nobody9999 1y ago
  >Because American ballots are massive? >They vote for everything including the president and local school district board members and everything in between at the same time. What's more, elections are managed/run at the county level, not at the state or Federal levels. As such, there isn't just one election in the US on election day. Rather, there are 3500+ elections, each with different ballots, different folks managing the elections and different sets of interested parties monitoring each of those 3500+ elections. While many offices are up for election every two or four or six years, not all of them fall on even-numbered years like the Federal elections. My state has state elections that happen in concert with Federal elections, but my local government does not. In fact, we're voting for mayor, City Council and every other elective city office in a few weeks, even though the federal and state elections aren't this year. Since elections are managed and run at the county level, there is little uniformity -- and less opportunity for widespread fraud.
lesuorac 1y ago
> For president you have a piece of paper with two boxes on. Are you not even 18 or have you never voted? Depending on your state there were about 20 candidates for president [1]. The fact that there's more than 2 has caused issues in the past where famously a candidate listed second on the ballot received a significant amount of votes in a county they were widely disliked [2]. [1]: https://ballotpedia.org/Presidential_candidates,_2024 https://ballotpedia.org/Presidential_candidates,_2024 [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_United_States_presidential_election_recount_in_Florida#Palm_Beach_County's_butterfly_ballot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_United_States_presidentia...
- layer8 1y ago
  GP isn’t American.
- ta1243 1y ago
  Fine Here's an electoral paper with 20 candidates. https://www.onlondon.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Screenshot-2021-05-12-at-14.07.04.png https://www.onlondon.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Screen... In this case it's even more complex as you get a second vote if your primary vote doesn't finish in the top two. Machines aren't needed
  - esseph 1y ago
    > Machines aren't needed Wow. What happens if you do 3 counts and get 3 vastly different outcomes?

by ta1243 1y ago

terminalshort 1y ago

That's not how it works everywhere else

iainmerrick 1y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_voting_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_voting_by_country suggests that centralized electronic counting is somewhat common, electronic voting machines in polling places are uncommon. So I think it's reasonable to say that, to paraphrase the earlier comment, putting an X in a box on a piece of paper is how it's done in most of the world. It's true that the ballots aren't always counted by hand.
- ta1243 1y ago
  Very few countries do national elections electronically (the ones most subject to interference) electronically. Sure with paper systems you might be able to swing upto say 1% of the vote without being detected (probably more like 0.1%), anything more will involve too many people for a conspiracy to remain. With electronic you can swing 20% without blinking. Scaling is bad when it comes to voting.
  - bilekas 1y ago
    > With electronic you can swing 20% without blinking. You're going to have to give some citations for that because all electronic votes are usually backed by a paper ballot.. I've not heard of 20%~ swing and getting away with it.
- nobody9999 1y ago
  >So I think it's reasonable to say that, to paraphrase the earlier comment, putting an X in a box on a piece of paper is how it's done in most of the world. >It's true that the ballots aren't always counted by hand. I can't speak for other jurisdictions (although I understand that this is pretty common in the US), but where I live (NY) we do exactly that. Well, instead of marking an 'X', we fill in an oval for each item on the ballot and that paper ballot is then scanned and counted. If there are issues or the vote is very close, as with most places, a recount is done, first by machine and, if necessary, by hand. How is this different from the rest of the world?

bilekas 1y ago

> I don't understand why Americans require machines to count. There's actually nothing wrong with machine counting, I believe it was found to be more accurate also overall less prone to fatigue and mistakes. [0] The real strange thing in the US is the electoral college system for Presidential elections, surely 1 person 1 vote nationwide would make sense. Afterall the President is supposed to represent everyone equally. [0] https://www.npr.org/2022/10/11/1128197774/research-finds-hand-counting-ballots-to-be-less-accurate-and-more-expensive https://www.npr.org/2022/10/11/1128197774/research-finds-han...

jepj57 1y ago
It's because we are the United STATES of America.
- atwrk 1y ago
  That's silly, most modern democracies are organized federally and don't have this issue.
  - dsr_ 1y ago
    Most modern democracies -- that's correct. Only the USA is organized this way. One might consider that later democracies learned from some of our mistakes.
- wat10000 1y ago
  A popular vote was seriously considered while drafting the Constitution for these United STATES. The founders didn’t seem to think it was a contradiction. They went with the current solution because it’s hard to count a slave as 3/5ths of a person with a national popular vote.

wqaatwt 1y ago

Because American ballots are massive? They vote for everything including the president and local school district board members and everything in between at the same time.

pmyteh 1y ago
When there are multiple simultaneous elections happening in the UK you get multiple ballot papers - one per race. You then put them into separate ballot boxes. This obviously doesn't scale elegantly to the kind of ballots that go from President to dog-catcher, but you could certainly separate them into pink, blue, yellow, and white ballots and count in parallel.
- wqaatwt 1y ago
  Well.. yes it is indeed technically possible to count a large number of paper sheets by hand.
  - ta1243 1y ago
    You don't have to use the same system for the higher risk ballots. A foreign state isn't going to spend millions trying to subvert the vote for the head of "Wyoming School Board 45". When I was at university our student elections were done on computer. 20 years ago. Nobody really cared about them, it was perfectly reasonable, you'd only have to bribe/threaten 3 people to make the result whatever you wanted. If you put the national election in the hands of 3 people though, then you have a major problem.
nobody9999 1y ago
>Because American ballots are massive? >They vote for everything including the president and local school district board members and everything in between at the same time. What's more, elections are managed/run at the county level, not at the state or Federal levels. As such, there isn't just one election in the US on election day. Rather, there are 3500+ elections, each with different ballots, different folks managing the elections and different sets of interested parties monitoring each of those 3500+ elections. While many offices are up for election every two or four or six years, not all of them fall on even-numbered years like the Federal elections. My state has state elections that happen in concert with Federal elections, but my local government does not. In fact, we're voting for mayor, City Council and every other elective city office in a few weeks, even though the federal and state elections aren't this year. Since elections are managed and run at the county level, there is little uniformity -- and less opportunity for widespread fraud.

lesuorac 1y ago

> For president you have a piece of paper with two boxes on. Are you not even 18 or have you never voted? Depending on your state there were about 20 candidates for president [1]. The fact that there's more than 2 has caused issues in the past where famously a candidate listed second on the ballot received a significant amount of votes in a county they were widely disliked [2]. [1]: https://ballotpedia.org/Presidential_candidates,_2024 https://ballotpedia.org/Presidential_candidates,_2024 [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_United_States_presidential_election_recount_in_Florida#Palm_Beach_County's_butterfly_ballot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_United_States_presidentia...

layer8 1y ago
GP isn’t American.
ta1243 1y ago
Fine Here's an electoral paper with 20 candidates. https://www.onlondon.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Screenshot-2021-05-12-at-14.07.04.png https://www.onlondon.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Screen... In this case it's even more complex as you get a second vote if your primary vote doesn't finish in the top two. Machines aren't needed
- esseph 1y ago
  > Machines aren't needed Wow. What happens if you do 3 counts and get 3 vastly different outcomes?