• bloodfart@lemmy.ml
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    2 months ago

    If hand counting is so error prone then why do we hand count during recounts and as you said during spot checks?

    I don’t buy it.

    Perhaps support for hand counting is partly coming from people hoping it will cause chaos. I don’t think it will based on my own limited experience in elections and weather it will or won’t, even the stopped clock of people who want to prevent and slow down the count tells the right time twice a day.

    Why is it such a big deal to know the next day who the winner is? They don’t take office until the next calendar year.

    • silence7@slrpnk.netOP
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      2 months ago

      Because you can do it well at small scale at modest expense. It’s expensive to do well and fast for ballots with lots of offices and in large numbers.

      This decision, unaccompanied by money to hire people, basically guarantees chaos.

      • bloodfart@lemmy.ml
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        2 months ago

        I don’t buy that.

        I know personally that election worker pay is dogshit. It’s way too cheap to do an election. Even if it weren’t, even if a person didn’t have my mistrust of machine voting, wouldn’t recognizing that the vote will likely be contested mean that going ahead and preparing to do a hand count anyway be the right choice?

        I mean, we’re headed for hand counts in the future anyway because no one trusts the elections. Even if someone wasn’t a proponent of hand counts like me, isn’t it good to be ready?

        What chaos that you talked about is gonna be brought on by this hand count? I can’t help but think that the whole election is chaotic…

        • silence7@slrpnk.netOP
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          2 months ago

          Pretty simple:

          • They require three people on each count. One is a Republican, one a Democrat, one an election worker
          • There isn’t money to hire election workers, so they can’t count the ballots fast
          • The Republicans are going to raise all sorts of random objections with no real basis
          • The slow counting in urban areas plus the spurious objections creates an excuse for local boards to refuse to certify the results
          • This in turn means no EVs from Georgia, so the election gets tossed to the house
          • bloodfart@lemmy.ml
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            2 months ago

            I know I sound like a broken record, but I don’t buy that.

            Last time a recount was ended and decided by a governmental body other than the election boards it was bush v gore and the Supreme Court. Back then there was a judicial branch less accommodating to the republicans. If the goal was to appoint the winner that would be the way to go. Theres precedent and it’s much easier to wrangle seven judges than it is to get the whole house in line.

            Why would it matter if the count is slow? Provisional ballots aren’t done for weeks after the election. In a close race it would be a long time till we’d know for sure anyway.

            Why do you think only the republican counter will raise objections? That hasn’t been my experience…

            When local boards refuse to certify an election the first step is a recount, not to kick it up the chain.

            If it is as chaotic and as big a deal as you’re saying, wouldn’t the spotlight be on the count/recount in a way that would make it hard to manipulate?

            I’m not gonna dox myself, but my objections to these lines of reasoning stem not just from having read extensively about the way 2000 was handled but also from my own experience working an election.

            • troglodytis@lemmy.world
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              2 months ago

              You mean the 2000 election that the hand recount took so long the supreme Court told Florida to stop counting when Bush was ahead, and then when all votes were counted Gore would have won?

              Yeah. Great example of how delays caused by objections this rule allows can lead to not all votes being counted.

              • bloodfart@lemmy.ml
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                2 months ago

                They would have had to recount the whole state of Florida to get the correct result (gore wins), not the counties they were recounting, so bush v gore was decided correctly. Maybe not for the right reasons, but it reflected reality.

                What I was referencing was that it’s pretty silly to think that the plan would be to herd the house into choosing the president when it’s easier to influence five or six judges and it worked before.

            • silence7@slrpnk.netOP
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              2 months ago

              They’re pretty explicit about the plan here: chaos, providing an excuse to ignore actual votes

                • silence7@slrpnk.netOP
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                  2 months ago

                  The election board has a majority who deny the 2020 results. What exactly do you think they’re planning to do?

                  • bloodfart@lemmy.ml
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                    2 months ago

                    I don’t know what people think or plan.

                    I’m interested to see if people have been discussing how to use the election process to disrupt the election itself though.

                    I also don’t think it’s a big deal if a hand count takes longer. Like I said before, provisional ballots aren’t finalized for weeks after the election so what’s the big deal?