Election Night Hand Counts: Realities and Risks - November 2023 1

For many voters, hand marking their ballots provides the best way to confirm that their ballots reflect their intent because paper ballots are designed to provide a “human-readable recording of a voter’s choices.”3 Accuracy of machine counts can be checked Calls to replace vote counting machines with election night hand counts disregard the safeguards election officials can use4 to ensure the secu. [...] A well conducted audit is transparent to the public and includes a process for identifying discrepancies and reporting how the discrepancies were resolved.6 Proponents of election night hand counts often assume that it is an accurate practice, but studies show vote counting machines count votes more accurately than humans do.7 In a study comparing the absolute difference between the election night. [...] Just one day into the count, they found a discrepancy of nearly 25%, chalking the errors up to mistakes by volunteer counters.9 In Shasta County, California, the county clerk and registrar of voters noted the importance of auditing machine counts rather than conducting the entire counting process by hand: “A selective manual tally—that is, hand counting some ballots to prove that machine counts ar. [...] has the longest ballots of any democracy in the world, with voters deciding on candidates at all levels of government (local, state, and federal) and the number of contests on the ballot varying by jurisdiction. [...] In Shasta County, California, home to more than 112,000 registered voters,12 the board of supervisors ignored pleas from election administrators and canceled the county’s contract with its current voting machine vendor, directing the elections department to develop a plan for hand counting ballots.13 The county clerk and registrar of voters released preliminary staffing and budgetary estimates for.