Alternate methods of voting - and counting the votes

[Gregg]

Mike Lindell says every Republican who won their election in 2022 should give up their win and agree to hold a new election with hand-counted paper ballots to help him prove the machines are rigged.

I have about had enough of the Taliban Luddites who want to take us back to the 19th Century because they don't understand technology and they think that has to be the reason they keep losing elections.

Paper Ballots are less accurate than machine counts. Paper Ballots would take months to count. For some reason they seem to think that if we just went to paper ballots there would be no mistakes and everyone would know who won by the end of the 11 o:clock news.

That has never been the case. Final counts have always taken days or even weeks to finish, by law in some places ballots have to be accepted as much as 10 days later if postmarked by election day. It was only when they started complaining about things they knew nothing about did any of this become an issue.

[RTH10260]

Paper Ballots are less accurate than machine counts. Paper Ballots would take months to count. For some reason they seem to think that if we just went to paper ballots there would be no mistakes and everyone would know who won by the end of the 11 o:clock news.

It can be done. Just that the ballot forms need to be restructured. Not one huge paper strip with every possible varying variant on the same paper.

I think I posted the Swiss expierience several times around here: one paper slip per issue to vote on (enter yes or no) of the name of a person to be elected for an office. Then counting just becomes the task of separating ballot slips, separate on yes/no or names, and count those unified stacks. If you can trust those banknote counting machines, it helps to speed up the process. Electing legislatives with mulitple participating party candidacies becomes slightly more complicated, but it's only once every four years (and then there is always one black sheep among the reporting cantons that gets two days late).

[noblepa]

Paper Ballots are less accurate than machine counts. Paper Ballots would take months to count. For some reason they seem to think that if we just went to paper ballots there would be no mistakes and everyone would know who won by the end of the 11 o:clock news.

That has never been the case. Final counts have always taken days or even weeks to finish, by law in some places ballots have to be accepted as much as 10 days later if postmarked by election day. It was only when they started complaining about things they knew nothing about did any of this become an issue.

That's right. In Ohio, mail-in ballots must be counted if they are postmarked by election day and received no later than 10 days after election day.

The county Boards of Election don't certify the results of an election until 30 days after election day. AFAIK, this has been the law since just about forever.

Even if we went back to the days before everyone could vote by mail, there would still be mail-in ballots; service members stationed overseas and voters who happen to be away from home on election day. That is the way it was in the "good old days" that the crazies seem to want to return to.

[northland10]

Mike Lindell says every Republican who won their election in 2022 should give up their win and agree to hold a new election with hand-counted paper ballots to help him prove the machines are rigged.

I have about had enough of the Taliban Luddites who want to take us back to the 19th Century because they don't understand technology and they think that has to be the reason they keep losing elections.

Not sure with MyPillowCrack dude, but with many of the MAGA, it has nothing to do with paper ballots. The ballot/machine screaming is all show to convince their base not to trust any election. They can then restrict voting to the "right" people or even just toss out votes if they don't suit their idea of a proper result.

With the darkening of the American electorate, they need a way to protect their "western culture" (which is just slang for white culture).

[RTH10260]

Do they need a hint to ask for a fraudit on their bank over the handling of the ATM machines?

[Sam the Centipede]

Paper Ballots are less accurate than machine counts. Paper Ballots would take months to count. For some reason they seem to think that if we just went to paper ballots there would be no mistakes and everyone would know who won by the end of the 11 o:clock news.

It can be done. Just that the ballot forms need to be restructured. Not one huge paper strip with every possible varying variant on the same paper.

I think I posted the Swiss expierience several times around here: one paper slip per issue to vote on (enter yes or no) of the name of a person to be elected for an office. Then counting just becomes the task of separating ballot slips, separate on yes/no or names, and count those unified stacks. If you can trust those banknote counting machines, it helps to speed up the process. Electing legislatives with mulitple participating party candidacies becomes slightly more complicated, but it's only once every four years (and then there is always one black sheep among the reporting cantons that gets two days late).

RTH is correct: months is an absurd exaggeration if the counts are organized sensibly.

Based on my experience when watching coverage of the 1997 election that made Tony Blair prime minister, the UK closes its parliamentary polling stations at 9 pm or 10 pm and results start coming in about 2 or 3 am, and most results are in by 9 am the following day. Recounts can delay that (the counters need sleep!), and some larger constituencies (e.g. the islands off the coast of Scotland) only start counting the following day, because the boxes have to be transported to the counting center.

Of course that speed isn't possibly in the USA: the UK (absent those island archipelagos) is a teeny-tiny country with itsy-bitsy constituencies, rarely more than a hour's travel wide. So in most of the non-metropolitan USA you'd need an extra day for transporting ballots to counting centers.

Then, as RTH suggests, the trick is to have the ballots papers designed for hand counting, and to prioritize the counts for the most important elements. So senior appointments early, dog catchers later, shall-we-shan't-we populist proposals last. Separate colored papers makes the first stage of sorting easy; separate ballot boxes even more so.

Ireland has paper ballots (some one will correct me if I'm wrong) with a Single Transferable Vote system for multi-member constituencies, meaning voters rank candidates in order of preference: 1, 2, 3,… So counting under STV is tricky, as piles get adjusted as candidates are eliminated, and preferences applied, but Ireland manages to get its counting completed for many constituencies on the day after polling day, and within a few days for the difficult cases.

Northern Ireland is part of the UK but, like the republic, has a STV system (Great Britain - the remainder of the UK - uses first-past-the-post). In their 2017 election, according to the Belfast Telegraph, Northern Ireland allocated all 90 seats in its assembly within 19 hours of the polls closing. It took longer during Covid.

Norway uses ballot papers and has a complicated party list regional proportional representation (PR) party list system, with national "leveling up" seats. The most recent parliamentary election in September 2021 was counted fast enough that the next day the prime minister (Erna Solberg of the Conservative party, Høyre [="Right" as in not-left]) had conceded the election to the more left-wing parties. If I recall, the final details of the results were delayed a few days because the precise number of votes in some northern (arctic) areas had a ripple effect on the "leveling up" seats, which are allocated nationally. That sort of effect would not apply in the USA, where each elections is independent from others.

Some countries have to count fast because their new government takes office immediately, or almost so. I think most countries do that. The USA is unusual in electing significantly before the winner can take office, so the odd day is probably not important.

To be clear: I have nothing against voting machines, but to imply that hand counts are impossible is just exceptionalism.

[Suranis]

Ireland has paper ballots (some one will correct me if I'm wrong) with a Single Transferable Vote system for multi-member constituencies, meaning voters rank candidates in order of preference: 1, 2, 3,… So counting under STV is tricky, as piles get adjusted as candidates are eliminated, and preferences applied, but Ireland manages to get its counting completed for many constituencies on the day after polling day, and within a few days for the difficult cases.

That's pretty accurate, for the record.

[Foggy]

This topic is not about Horses or Mike Lindell, so please corral your post titles accordingly.

The management thanks you.

[Foggy]

Personally, I'm looking forward to the day when we use biometric voting.

And don't they have mandatory voting in Oz?

Which could work, if you also had mandatory voter education.

[jez]

At the polling places, Ohio also has a choice of a electronic ballot (digital) or paper (fill in the bubble). Both are ready by a scanner then dropped into a locked box under the scanner. So, there is a paper backup if they have to do a hand count.

The digital votes are done by touch screen and prints on a long, thin piece of paper (8x4, I think).

It's pretty easy.

[northland10]

This topic is not about Horses or Mike Lindell, so please corral your post titles accordingly.

The management thanks you.

I thought I had and was really confused when the title I had corrected to Lindell was actually in the Alternate methods topic. How could I have messed that up?

Oh, my post along with others were moved to a new topic. For completeness and order in the galaxy, I went back and change my original post.

[Reality Check]

At the polling places, Ohio also has a choice of a electronic ballot (digital) or paper (fill in the bubble). Both are ready by a scanner then dropped into a locked box under the scanner. So, there is a paper backup if they have to do a hand count.

The digital votes are done by touch screen and prints on a long, thin piece of paper (8x4, I think).

It's pretty easy.

We moved away from Kentucky in 2017 but by then they had both electronic and scanned paper ballots. I would guess 90% chose paper. The electronic machine had a very poorly designed interface. Instead of using a touch screen or a mouse you had to spin a wheel to scroll through the choices then push the wheel to select your choice. It was easy to scroll by and select the wrong candidate. I tried it once and went back to paper after that. My old boss was a long time poll worker for our precinct. I told him the machine was junk. He said most people agreed.

I have never lived in a state with ranked choice voting but it sounds interesting and I would like to see it catch on.

[pipistrelle]

This topic bugs me. On one hand there are issues that need to be solved (like voter suppression, etc.), but the bigger issue is the ongoing and growing belief based on nothing but the claims of losers that there is widespread fraud and abuse. "Alternate methods" makes me think it's giving credence to those claims. Not that case, but that's how I think.

[raison de arizona]

The idea of different colored paper for different races is fine, but I had well over forty on my ballot. It doesn’t scale.

[Ben-Prime]

The idea of different colored paper for different races is fine, but I had well over forty on my ballot. It doesn’t scale.

When you count judicial races, city and council charter issues, etc., I think my ballot was 2 legal sized pages, front and back.

[jemcanada2]

The idea of different colored paper for different races is fine, but I had well over forty on my ballot. It doesn’t scale.

When you count judicial races, city and council charter issues, etc., I think my ballot was 2 legal sized pages, front and back.

This seems so foreign to me. We hold our federal, provincial, and municipal elections separately. For the federal and provincial elections, you put an X beside one name to vote for your Member of Parliament or Member of Parliament Provincial. For municipal elections, you vote for more positions like mayor and councillors, but we don’t vote for judges, prosecutors, clerks, etc.

But may I suggest this Canadian way of voting as an alternative?

[RTH10260]

The idea of different colored paper for different races is fine, but I had well over forty on my ballot. It doesn’t scale.

In our Swiss model of basis democracy we get to vote / elect up to four times a year at all levels. So each time does not accumulate a huge amount of issues to decide. We also have a rule: when we run elections for the equivalent of Congress (state / federal levels) we omit to add other things on that weekend.

[RTH10260]

One great difference with the Swiss model is based on the fact that (like in all European countries) there is a strict registration requirement for residents in the municipality / city where they live. Using this registration all Swiss Citizens of voting age (18+) will be sent automatically all ballots and additional voting information, no extra voter registration needed, also that registration does not track any party affiliaton. Voting onformation is sent out four weeks prior to voting day (officially Sundays, ballot boxes will also be open at other times, mail voting is now said to reach 90%). Another difference for elections: we do not have any "Primaries" US style for election, only "General" (US term) election, eg one run, sometimes followed by runoffs a couple of weeks later. All candidates are chosen and presented by the various parties, some independant or sometimes fringe write-in.

I will post some sets of images with copies of the Swiss Spring 2022 voting and election round (members only to limit search engines).

[RTH10260]

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[RTH10260]

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[RTH10260]

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[RTH10260]

In addition to these ballot votings, municipalities will have the equivalent to US townhall meetings to decide issues in open vote (hold up a voting card). Participants are limited to Swiss Citizens living in the municipality (visitors allowed on separate gallery). Attendance rates tend traditionally to be very low (2%) but can explode when the municipality board tries to "hide" something critical. Attendees may request that a controverse issue be sent to the next ballot and not decided at the townhall. Traditional issues are in the autumn the municipality budget for the coming year (which includes the setting of the local tax rate) and in the spring the acceptance of the audited financial report of the previous year. Some larger municipalities have chosen to replace the townhall format by a local parliament. Parliament decisions will often be followed by a mandatory ballot vote (eg high value investments). Voters can challenge a parliament decision with a "referendum" and get it to ballot vote.

[RTH10260]

PS. I had the pictures made in the spring cause there had been earlier discussions, but then I skipped the posting opportunity.

[Suranis]

One thing that has to be mentioned is that counting Ballots here is a huge undertaking. There is a large room filled with people, all sorting the votes into piles and then counting them. Basically, what I'm saying is that you COULD count ballots fast - if you were willing to spend money to get the small army of people in to do it fast.

But you're not.

The other thing is that you just don't have a centralized format for your elections. Every one of your states and counties has its own form of voting form, and that's just not good for fast counting. In Ireland there's different people on the ballot but you could get people in from outside the county and they would still be familiar with the board form of the voting form, or small counties like Louth could send its ballots to the counting center in Kildare and they could do it fairly easily. In the states that kind of flexability isn't possible.

In the spoiler is an example of an Irish vote form.

► Show Spoiler

vote.jpg (36.88 KiB) Viewed 823 times

[humblescribe]

Are Swiss ballots only in German?

What about those near Italy or France who speak other languages? From my history classes decades ago, I recall learning that Switzerland has three languages spoken among its citizens.

I think here in California ballot materials are available in a number of languages besides English.