In a rare step, 3 South Dakota counties are set to vote on counting ballots by hand
Source: ABC News/AP
June 2, 2024, 1:53 AM
Voters in at least three rural South Dakota counties are set to decide Tuesday whether to return to counting ballots by hand, the latest communities around the country to consider ditching machine tabulators based on unfounded conspiracy theories stemming from the 2020 presidential election.
The three counties, each with fewer than 6,000 residents, would be among the first in the U.S. to require old-school hand counts, which long ago were replaced by ballot tabulators in most of the country. A number of other states and local governments have considered banning machine counting since the 2020 election, but most of those efforts have sputtered over concerns of cost, the time it takes to count by hand and the difficulty of hiring more staff to do it.
Experts say counting the votes by hand is less accurate that (sic) machine tabulation. Supporters of the South Dakota effort aren't deterred by such worries. “We believe that a decentralized approach to the elections is much more secure, much more transparent, and that the citizens should have oversight over their elections,” said Jessica Pollema, president of SD Canvassing, a citizen group supporting the change.
Like efforts elsewhere, the South Dakota push for hand counting has its origins in false claims pushed by former President Donald Trump and his allies after the 2020 presidential election.
Read more: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/rare-step-3-south-dakota-counties-set-vote-110749913
They have literally become brain-dead zombies.
= new reply since forum marked as read
How many people live in South Dakota?
and both blue counties AND deep red counties in PA have BEGGED the state Legislature to modify the law to allow for pre-canvassing the ballots so they can be counted/tabulated on election day.
When Democrats recaptured the PA state House in 2022 (which the "polls" did not see coming), they have started attempting to move legislation that never saw the light of day when the GOP controlled the chamber. One such bill deals with the mail ballot issue -
by Carter Walker of Votebeat | May 2, 2024
HARRISBURG — Pennsylvania House Democrats are again pushing to allow counties time to process mail ballots before the day of the election. But the effort appears doomed because of the Senate GOP majority’s insistence on pairing the measure with an expanded voter ID law.
A House bill passed Wednesday in a party line vote would allow counties up to seven days before election day to open ballot envelopes and run ballots through scanning machines, though results would still be tabulated on the day of the election. Currently, counties cannot begin processing mail ballots until the morning of the election, which means counties with large numbers of mail ballots may need additional days to finish counting and report complete results.
The extra time for the process, known as pre-canvassing, has been a priority for Democratic lawmakers this session and has drawn bipartisan support at the county level. But efforts to cut a deal with Republicans have repeatedly fallen apart, a fate that seems likely to repeat, even though this year’s bill is much more narrowly tailored than previous measures.
“I believe this is the time, given that it is a presidential year and no one wants to go through the conspiracy theories,” said Rep. Scott Conklin, (D., Centre), the bill’s prime sponsor. “This alone will clean up 99 percent of what the public is worried about.”
(snip)
https://www.spotlightpa.org/news/2024/05/precanvassing-mail-ballots-2024-election-pennsylvania-legislature/
The GOP still controls the PA Senate and that is where this will go to die.
When we mail the ballots (addressed to the city), they are run through, unopened, some kind of scanner that will scan the barcode/QR code to note receipt of the ballot and record it. That info is made available to the state as well as the local Ward/Division, and an email is generated to confirm receipt and to basically say "you're done" (unless some problem is found on that outer envelope that needs to be corrected - and then that is a whole other process of "curing", which has been a PITA because that was not part of the original state law so counties came up with their own ordinances for it).
With 1.1 million registered voters and ~750 thousand who actually voted in 2020 here in Philly, with about 370K of those being mail ballots, it took 5 days to get final results just out of this one largest county in the state of Pennsylvania. And that is with all automatic counting.
Part of the problem was that the GOP loons in the state legislature here have blocked "pre-canvassing" of those mail ballots BEFORE election day, meaning taking the secrecy envelope out of the outer mailing envelope and then the ballot out of the secrecy envelope and stacking them to tally. They had to wait until 7 am local time on Election Day just to start doing that part. Then there is a check of the outer envelope for a signature and date (and a match of the signature), and since the ballot and outer envelope are barcoded, they can pull any ballots that are questionable.
The below showed some of that process (part of the beginning and later in the segment showed Philly's operations in 2020 which was much larger than the D.C. operation that was featured) -
This was part of the view here (they live-streamed the whole thing that week) -
Of course this is not including the other 400K of "in person" votes that happened at voting machines.
with from about 1000 - 4,000 per Division. There are 66 Wards, each with multiple Divisions.
There are usually only about 5 or 6 election workers per Division (if that). The new machines the city started using have a print-out on thermal paper, which IMHO is a mess. I used that new touchscreen machine in November 2019 when they first switched to them, and after that nightmare, thankfully mail voting became law (officially in April 2020), and I have voted by mail ever since.
After COVID, they have been having a hard time getting people to work the elections (even though they do get trained and paid a stipend). I literally had a voice mail today from someone recruiting for poll workers.
Bottom line? It ain't happening.
There have been some sort of "computer" tabulation here since the early 20th century. I think the below is a '60s model that was in use for decades here and I believe it registered votes on a little ticker tape.
I know I voted with that until around the early 2000s when they got a big membrane touch panel thing (finally replaced with a touch screen in 2019).
Name a SINGLE European country that has a population of 336 million.
I'll wait. 
The entirety of Canada has about the same population as the state of California.
The European (and Canadian) systems of government use a "Parliament", without a fixed set of national elections for the head of the government, where "snap elections" can happen at any time, and where a party (or coalition of parties) SELECT THE Prime Minister.
I.e., there is no "primary election" for a PM.
Can't compare the systems!
The whole voting process here is NOT the same as the rest of the world and is not controlled by the federal government, but by the states, with the feds mainly dealing with a narrow type of election dealing with federal officeholders.
We just watched both Mexico and India carrying out voting that went on for WEEKS. That spreads out the number of votes tallied in a day. There are states here that don't have that - you vote on election day and that's it.
(from here - https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/early-person-voting-strong-option-concerned-voters/story?id=72248475)
You also have a loon GOP who purposely slows the process of tallying votes - notably mail voting where available, forcing workers to WAIT until election day when the polls open in the morning, to open envelopes and extract ballots for counting. But those mail ballots have signatures on the envelopes that must be "matched" and fucking dates that must be there or the vote is discarded (this is still being litigated here in PA with a new case that started up last week).
I just showed you the operation for tallying JUST the mail votes here in Philly where they were working 24/7 to process 375,000 mail ballots that were then fed into machines to count. Trying to do that "by hand" for every office and/or ballot question in one day, is impossible.
In Canada, ALL Judges are "appointed". In the U.S., they can be "appointed" OR "elected". Federal judges are "appointed" but STATE/COUNTY/MUNICIPAL judges might be either/or.
Here in Pennsylvania, ALL of our judges are ELECTED (including the highest level - the State Supreme Court). We have "Municipal Courts", "Common Pleas Courts", "Commonwealth Courts", "Superior Courts", and the "State Supreme Court". We also have a "Judge of Elections" that gets elected for each "Division" (precinct).
That means you get ballots like this during years when they are up for "election" (to fill vacancies) or "retention" (to allow them to continue for another term) -
In any given year, I may see a ballot for Commonwealth Court judges that has 10 names and I need to pick 5.
You can do the math on the number of combinations and permutations of votes. And that is in addition to whatever else is on the ballot (in the above example, there was also an election for the city's District Attorney and City Controller).
And nowadays here, just about every election has a "referendum", whether at the state level or county/municipal level. Canada doesn't do those or only does them very rarely.
"Hand counting" with a ballot that might have ONE or a few candidates on it might is one thing. But multi-page ballots with locally elected offices, ballot questions, and even judicial elections/retentions, takes voting to a whole other level that is just not done elsewhere in the world due to their systems of government.
Wow those ballots look insane!
That's why I mentioned it as perhaps a reason your counting may take longer. You initially responded by not addressing that point, and only rejected the "density" argument. Which I only brought up to show how countries with much higher densities, ie...way more people to process per sq. km, do just fine with paper ballots.
We here don't have those loaded ballots to slog through. The time we elect other politicians are at the municipal level. {Parks board, school trustees, etc.} Federally, and Provincially, its is only who your 'district's rep will be of the party of the PM or Premier you want. Simple, and only takes a few minutes.
Our federal ballot looks like this sample:
So yes, I see your point about the ballots.
But its all about having enough workers per district to process them. Even if it takes weeks, which I kind of doubt, I think the GOP's and Putin's attempt to destabilize faith in the democratic elections process would take a hit if the machines were retired. One less excuse for the magats to use. It may be worth the waiting for results just for that reason alone.
Wow those ballots look insane!
That's why I mentioned it as perhaps a reason your counting may take longer. You initially responded by not addressing that point, and only rejected the "density" argument. Which I only brought up to show how countries with much higher densities, ie...way more people to process per sq. km, do just fine with paper ballots.
And I stand by the "density" argument being irrelevant. One of the biggest problems is getting (and paying for) enough people to manage "in person" voters, whether the voting location uses an actual paper "book" that has the list of voters in a precinct so that person can be identified and verified, and where they will "sign" the page with their name indicating they are voting (and the signature needs to match the copy of a signature that the book has) -OR- similarly nowadays, where those names in the binders are now stored in a database and the verification process is done electronically (an electronic "poll book", which here in Philly they just implemented last year) -
This is in addition to dealing with voters needing help to get through any touchscreen machines (if requested), and going through the process of AUTOMATED counting of the resultant ballots generated by those machines, and transmission of those results.
In 2020, the derisively-named "Zuckerbucks" helped a number of locales to get additional equipment and have money to pay people to actually work the polls and tabulations during the pandemic.
The GOP has criticized the $350 million in "Zuckerbucks," prompting GOP bans on private donations to help run elections.
Sept. 8, 2022, 12:52 PM EDT
By Ben Kamisar
The Federal Election Commission unanimously voted to dismiss a complaint over the 2020 nonpartisan election-administration grants funded primarily by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan.
The grants provoked significant ire among many conservatives in the aftermath of the election and was used by some to further false claims of widespread election fraud. But new documents published by the FEC show that in a 6-0 vote, the commission agreed that there's "no reason to believe" the non-profit, Zuckerberg or Chan committed any wrongdoing.
The Center for Tech and Civil Life announced in October of 2020 that Zuckerberg and Chan committed $350 million to help the group provide nonpartisan grants to election administrators dealing with the infrastructure challenges of running an election during a global pandemic.
"We should be doing everything we can to make it easier for people to cast their ballots," Chan and Zuckerberg said in a 2020 statement announcing part of the nine-figure donation. "These funds will serve all sorts of communities throughout the country — urban, rural, and suburban — and we remain determined to ensure that every state and local election jurisdiction has the resources they need so Americans can vote."
(snip)
https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/meetthepressblog/federal-election-officials-clear-zuckerbergs-2020-election-administrat-rcna46844
Our federal ballot looks like this sample:
(snip)
Imagine now, in some states where there is "ranked choice" or "jungle primaries", meaning that for the "ranked choice" type, you may have 10 people running, from any party, for the election of a single office, and the voter will "rank" each candidate based on their top choice, then the next choice, and so on... #1 - #10 (where they might just rank a couple and leave the other names blank and unranked). And for the "jungle primary", you again have all parties running but usually the "top 2" vote-getters advance to the next round (whether to a general election or for some kind of run-off between those 2).
Tabulating the "top" vote getters manually can be error prone. I know here in Philly, we don't have either of those "formally named" types of voting however we do have something along the lines of having many candidates running for say 7 seats and the voter picks no more than 7 out of however many candidates are on the ballot. In some cases, that voter might only select 3 (and although those will be considered okay, it's still considered an "under-vote" ). If they pick more than 7, then that is an "over-vote" and would probably mean the ballot is discarded (or at least the vote for that office).
But its all about having enough workers per district to process them. Even if it takes weeks, which I kind of doubt, I think the GOP's and Putin's attempt to destabilize faith in the democratic elections process would take a hit if the machines were retired. One less excuse for the magats to use. It may be worth the waiting for results just for that reason alone.
Well the "weeks" is what it often took back in the "old days" and here in Philly because of the GOP idiocy, it took almost a week to get to a point of "certifying" a win for Biden out of the state of PA, waiting for Philly's tranche to come in.
But THAT is why it's automated now so that you cut the amount of time to count and generally have results within a day or two, IF procedures are allowed to speed the process. Forcing the extraction of hundreds of thousands of ballots from envelopes to ONLY be allowed to happen the morning of election day has been one of the biggest obstacles to getting results quickly from mail ballots here. I won't even get into trying to manually "hand count" any of that.
"Umm... did he mean to vote for....?"
"Well... let's just say, umm... yeah."
and that has been long slog to get there, and in some cases, it's questionable about whether certain systems truly have a good auditable paper trail.
H.R.3295 - Help America Vote Act of 2002
Having "paper ballots" / "paper trail" allows for AUDITS meaning that you don't have to hand-count every single ballot but can select a √' of the total to validate "by hand".
But you knew that, right? 
would determine whether there was "hand counting" or "machine audit".
The arguments that were circulating about certain voting systems, like Diebold, was because of this -
Sep 3, 2009 1:50 PM
Diebold Unloads Beleaguered Voting Machine Division
It took about three years but Diebold has finally managed to get out of the election business. The company announced Thursday that Premier Election Solutions, Diebold's beleaguered voting machine division, has been acquired by Election Systems and Software (ES&S).
(snip)
Diebold, an Ohio-based maker of ATMs and security systems, purchased its elections business from Global Election Systems in January 2002, just as Congress was passing the Help America Vote Act, which allocated billions to states to purchase new voting machines. Diebold Elections Systems, however, barely had time to bask in the flow of federal funds before it ran headlong into controversy in 2003 when Diebold Inc. CEO Walden O'Dell, a fundraiser for former President George Bush, wrote in a letter to Republican supporters that the company was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president" in 2004.
The company also became a target of voting activists that year after it inadvertently released its source code on an FTP server, and computer scientists who examined it discovered numerous security problems with the system.
Criticism of the company and its machines remained constant as Diebold voting machines experienced numerous problems in election districts around the country, and incidents of company officials applying uncertified patches to machines were exposed. The most recent problem with the company's system occurred in the 2008 presidential election in Humboldt County, California, when Diebold's tabulation software randomly deleted nearly 200 votes. An examination of the system revealed that its audit logs failed to record significant events, such as someone deleting votes from the system; it also contained a delete button that allowed anyone with access to the system to erase the audit logs.
(snip)
https://www.wired.com/2009/09/diebold-sells/
Head in sand?
You do realize that my reply was to someone else?
This was the original start of that sub-thread -
44. Before criticizing South Dakota... Mon Jun 3, 2024, 04:52 PM
…remember that plenty of folks here were demanding “paper ballots hand counted” back in 2004 when the going conspiracy theory was that Republicans were rigging voting machines.
Twitter/Threads: @ChrisBastianBKL
And THAT is what I was addressing.
I went through a whole argument with you earlier in this thread about the difficulty getting election workers and the complexity of many ballots. My last response was here - https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1014&pid=3251082
Here in PA, we might actually be simpler than other states that tend to have piles of "questions" and "referendums" to also vote for.
You seem to grasp but not comprehend as "believable" the idiocy of the GOP.
In other words, YES these idiots WILL cut off their noses to spite their faces when it comes to attacking Democrats.
Seriously. They ARE that stupid and driven.
Case in point - one of the reddest and most rural counties here in PA named "Fulton" (similar to the famous county in GA) decided to jump on the "Dominion Systems machines are fraud" bandwagon by bringing in 3rd parties (including 1 associated with Wake TSI - the group that fiddled with machines in AZ) to do an "audit" of the machines. The Secretary of the Commonwealth (simialr to the Secretary of State in other states), decertified their machines. The courts here said STOP. They ignored the court and eventually brought in 2 more 3rd party companies to "audit" those machines and were told to STOP again.
This is a county that voted for 45 by something like 86%, with a county population of just over 14,000 (a couple thousand more than my city neighborhood) -
They have still been battling with the state of PA with their nonsense -
https://www.democracydocket.com/cases/pennsylvania-fulton-county-voting-machines-challenge/
It was all part of the conspiracy by 45's loons to attack Dominion (and we saw what happened with the Fox settlement and their role in defaming Dominion) -
Pennsylvania has joined the growing number of states where partisan actors have launched baseless election investigations, with Republican lawmakers initiating in September 2021 a “forensic investigation” into the state’s 2020 election results.
Last updated: April 11, 2023
(snip)
One key player leading the push to “audit” Pennsylvania’s election was state Sen. Doug Mastriano, a vocal Trump ally who attended — and organized buses to — the rally that preceded the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. In the spring, reporting on the Arizona Senate’s partisan election review revealed that one of the review’s participating firms, Wake Technology Services Inc., had in late 2020 contracted with a group led by former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell to conduct a review of ballots cast in Pennsylvania’s Fulton County, which had been set up by Mastriano.
Mastriano visited the Arizona Senate’s sham election “audit” in June 2021 and was inspired to implement a similar effort in his home state. Over the summer, he sent letters to York, Tioga, and Philadelphia counties demanding that they turn over election equipment and voting machines. However, in August, Corman pushed Mastriano out of his chairmanship of the Intergovernmental Operations Committee and replaced him with Sen. Cris Dush, thwarting Mastriano’s plans to subpoena the counties. While no longer the chair, Mastriano remained on the committee and in the Senate’s investigation. In 2022, Mastriano unsuccessfully ran as the Republican nominee for governor of Pennsylvania.
(snip)
https://www.americanoversight.org/investigation/efforts-to-audit-and-undermine-the-2020-election-in-pennsylvania
And the county was sanctioned by the courts here - Pennsylvania seeks legal costs from county that let outsiders access voting machines to help Trump
So tell why would the GOP, in a red county that voted 86% for 45, think there was "fraud" there"?
Some believe this was so they could get a copy of the software used so that it could possibly be manipulated.
This is the state of affairs of the GOP.
Someone raised the pont about how many Democrats were calling foul in the 2000 election about machine manipulation. Now its Rs. So, how about to make everyone happy, have it split. All those other peripheral questions on a separate machine processed ballot...with paper trails. And have one main ballot submitted and hand counted, that looks similar to the one I showed you as a sample of Canada's ballot. A simple X beside the Presidential choice.
Back when the problems associated with Diebold voting machines was all the rage here on DU (and that went on for years), particularly with the aftermath of the 2004 OH election and OH SOS Ken Blackwell (a stockholder in the company), supposedly diverting election results through a RNC server and whatnot, that is what prompted the brouhaha about needing some kind of verified paper trail for the machines (which was actually a requirement from the "Help America Vote Act" ) and the debate continues to this day about whether these systems actually produce one that could actually be used in a "hand count".
Are you kidding me????
The country was FREAKING OUT in 2020 waiting for either candidate to be certified as the "winner". That didn't happen until 4 days later when MY STATE pretty much finished up with enough to take Biden over the top for the Electoral College tally (a system that Canada doesn't have).
The below was 3 days after the election and we were nowhere near done counting here in Philly (didn't happen until the next day) -
People here desire "instant" and expect it, and as long as you have ballots with dozens and dozens of names for dozens of candidates along with other stuff, it'll never be "instant" - not even with machine counting (and I won't even go into what it takes to count the "provisional ballots" and the time for doing that).
