Reply #8: The ballot shown was 2006 General Election

[troubleinwinter]

I did not say that hand counting is "impractical" "where hand counts are done", obviously. I asked how many pollworkers/counters would be needed in a large county with a long and complicated ballot.

Primary ballots typically have many fewer items than GE ballots.

Nationwide, jurisdictions were about 25% short of pollworkers in the GE of 2006. The greatest difficulty is in recruiting pollworkers in in innercity, poor, minority and immigrant communities (areas with high rates of disenfranchisement as it is).

New Hampshire cast 45,000 votes in a few hand-count jurisdictions within the state in the 2008 primary, small areas with long tradition and experience with handcounts. Some 122,000,000 (as cast in 2004 GE) ballots will need to be accurately counted, not just 43,000.

I wonder about "practical" logistics of assuring election counts without chaos. I absolutely do not oppose handcounts. I oppose chaos and failure in our counts. I just read an MIT report of New Hampshire hand counts vs. opscans. Upon study of many NH recounts, opscans were shown to be more accurate than handcounts. I suport rigorous random audits for opscans.

The fact that L.A. had a 50+ item ballot General Election remains. My question about how we assure sufficient workers for handcounts, with an existing situation of 25% pollworker shortage, remains.

Your pointless accusation of "bias" does not answer legitimate questions in the face of pollworker shortages.