My experience counting paper ballots in a state election in Germany.

[redgreenandblue]

Last edited Thu Mar 31, 2016, 09:46 AM - Edit history (1)

In Germany all elections use paper ballots which are hand counted. The counting happens in a public building and while the counting is going on all doors need to be open, such that any person can walk into the rooms at any time and verify that things are going on correctly. They always need a large number of volunteers to help out. I served as such a volunteer once. Here is something that I experienced:

At the end of the day, after hours of work and counting tens of thousands of votes, it was discovered that there was a small error in the records: The number of ballots differed from the number of voters by a small number (something like two or three as far as I remember, out of tens of thousands, probably the result of someone forgetting to cross out someone that had voted). This prompted a huge discussion, which nearly resulted in the entire district being tossed out. At the end it was decided that democracy is better served by accepting this small deviation. But never once was this regarded as not serious.

Now when I read about Arizona all I can do is shake my head. I cannot see how they would even consider treating this as a valid election when the whole process was so clearly and utterly corrupted. Either they need to do a re-vote or throw out the state IMO. Anything else would be shameful.

On edit: Here is an example of the complexity that we successfully dealt with.

[brooklynite]

1. How many races were being carried out at one?

Especially in a parliamentary system where fixed terms are unusual, the odds are good that only one office will be voted on at at time. Imagine how many different races (and ballot boxes) you'd need for a States like California in a Presidential election year.

[Scuba]

3. Huh? What?

[brooklynite]

4. The simplicity of "check a box on a piece of paper and drop it in the box"...

...doesn't scale well when you're voting for President/Vice President, Senate, US House, State Senate, State Assembly, and then 15 ballot initiatives all at the same time.

[Scuba]

5. Paper ballots, hand counted, in public, cameras rolling, nothing less.

Your attempt to justify something other than paper ballots is not working.

[redgreenandblue]

9. See my post below.

The number of options that the person you replied to listed are nothing compared to what we had to deal with.

[lagomorph777]

7. Do you remember how much longer it took to count votes when we had the e-voting epidemic?

The machines were constantly "breaking down" (i.e. being hacked). It took days to weeks to get the untrusted results. Counting ballots can be scaled: you simply need a number of volunteers proportional to the number of voters. It's completely natural.

[redgreenandblue]

10. I posted an example of what we had to deal with below.

It was in fact very complex, but it was successfully dealt with.

[lagomorph777]

12. Yes, and you were able to fix it because the physical evidence was in hand.

Had it come to that, you could have performed a recount. That's impossible or meaningless with the machines.

[karynnj]

15. Paper ballots hand tallied could still work for this, the "cost" would be that there would be no

instant results. However, paper ballots fed into an optical scanner could be a good alternative. For any district where the results are questioned, you still have the pile of ballots that can be hand counted.

This is how we vote in Burlington, Vermont. This is more reassuring to me than the machines used in Morris County, NJ where you push the levers and supposedly there is an UNSEEN paper trail generated. (PS more people vote at my Burlington district than at the Morris County one. I do not think it is something that works only in lightly populated areas. )

It is troubling that as long ago as 2004, Jimmy Carter, who has monitored elections in the developing world, has said that he could and would not monitor a US election because - as is - it does not meet the standards that have been developed. In 2005, a friend of mine was very concerned with the New York state voting machines, many or all of which did not have paper trails that could be used if a result was questioned.

After 2000, there were many articles written on the problems with voting in the US. It appears that many have not been fixed. There is no uniform standard across the country. One article spoke of how the voting process led to a systemic undercount in the poorest areas. It also spoke of the fact that even when honest, well intentioned people were in power in poor counties with known problems, they were often faced with the choice of spending money to fix that problem or allocating that money for basic needs.

However, it is hard to accept that groups of Congressmen and Senators join international experts to monitor elections in emerging nations - praising what is good and noting the problems, BUT our own elections to meet international standards. I would rather have the outlined German process - even if it means it could be the following day(s) before all the paper ballots for all races are correctly tabulated. Cumbersome as it is, it would have prevented the problems of BOTH 2000 and 2004. (No 10 hour lines if there are paper ballots - it eliminates the long queues for a voting machine. Even paper ballots and optical scanners reduce queues immensely and they have the advantage that they reject ballots that have problems in real time - letting the voter start over to enter a clean vote. )

[redgreenandblue]

8. Many. It was in fact massively complicated. You could vote for parties and individual candidates etc

Here is an example as to how the ballot looks like. Ours were as big as posters. You could distribute up to 52 votes among candidates if you wished (on this the example it is 28), vote for one party, or vote for one party but remove individual candidates. We had to count everything and did.

[Bluenorthwest]

11. What does the number of items on the ballot have to do with the relation of the number of ballots to

the number of voters? 100 voters, 102 ballots. That's two more ballots than recorded voters no matter if the ballot has one line or many.

Oregon uses all paper ballots, some have a single issue or candidate, others have many, many. They all go in the same box.

[Wilms]

13. Get a Zip Car and drive up to Columbia County

Let them know they can't hand count ballots.

County becoming known for hand-counting votes

Columbia County is gaining a reputation for voting integrity, thanks to its rigorous policy of hand-counting votes: County inspectors hand-tally all but state races and certified blowouts. Because of that policy, county Democratic Election Commissioner Virginia Martin has been invited to two recent panels on voting security.

http://www.registerstar.com/news/article_5e9d2a64-2465-11e5-b138-179c54bb2006.html

[Skwmom]

2. Our voting system is a joke. n/t

[pinebox]

6. Amiland ist vorbei und jetzt scheissland

Ich denke zurück zu bewegen.....ich hab genug, Nase ist voll

[marions ghost]

14. Thanks

Americans need to STOP putting up with this antiquated, byzantine horror of a "system."

The reasonit's the way it is here is because it allows room for corruption.

[tk2kewl]

16. k&r

[Bob41213]

17. Very interesting

Never would have thunk Germany would do ballots like that. Would have totally guessed it was a automated computer system.

I love the voting is sacred aspect of it.

I just can't imagine anything like that would come back here.