In a rare step, 3 South Dakota counties are set to vote on counting ballots by hand

[yellowdogintexas]

12. There is pressure here for hand counting too. That is fine in a county with 5000 voters

but we have counties with more than 1 million voters. A couple of the smaller counties did hand counts and came up with lots of errors. This does not bode well.

Our Presidential and Gubernatorial ballots are quite long, mostly because we have a ton of county wide judicial contests along with the various district and state wide votes. I shudder at the thought of hand counting!!

The MAGAs on our County Commissioner's Court are pushing hard for hand counting; they want them hand counted at the precinct before sending to the Elections Office. Because we are paid for hours worked at the precinct (up to 14 hours) it will increase costs; we would need a second shift of vote counters after the opening shift has worked 14 hours. That is a huge cost increase.

We have already lost the battle to use totally blank ballots; now we are supposed to 'track' ballots by a serial number on the ballot (another increased cost).When we had handmarked ballots, the serial numbers were printed on the ballots, and we always had thousands of unused ballots. Totally blank ballots may be used indefinitely, so no trashing needed. I have worked elections where we were issued 800 pre printed ballots and only used 200.