Product Code Database
Vote counting is the process of counting in an election. It can be done manually or Voting machine. In the United States, the compilation of election returns and validation of the outcome that forms the basis of the official results is called canvassing.
Counts are simplest in elections where just one seat is being filled and only a few candidates are on the ballot, and these are often counted manually. In elections where many seats are being filled on the same ballot, counts are often done by computers to give quick results. Tallies done at distant locations must be carried or transmitted accurately to the central election office.
Manual counts are usually accurate within one percent. Computers are at least that accurate, except when they have undiscovered bugs, broken sensors scanning the ballots, paper misfeeds, or Hacker. Officials keep election computers off the internet to minimize hacking, but the manufacturers are on the internet. They and their annual updates are still subject to hacking, like any computers. Further, voting machines are in public locations on election day, and often the night before, so they are vulnerable.
Paper ballots and computer files of results are stored until they are tallied, so they need secure storage, which is hard. The election computers themselves are stored for years, and briefly tested before each election.
Despite the challenges to the U.S. voting process integrity in recent years, including claims by Republican Party members of error or voter fraud in 2020 and 2021, a robust examination of the voting process in U.S. states, including Arizona (where claims were most strenuous), found no basis in truth for those claims. The absence of error and fraud is partially attributable to the inherent checks and balances in the voting process itself, which are, as with democracy, built into the system to reduce their likelihood.
A variant is to read aloud the choice on each ballot while putting it into its pile, so observers can tally initially, and check by counting the piles. This method has been used in Ghana, Indonesia, and Mozambique. These first two methods do not preserve the original order of the ballots, which can interfere with matching them to tallies or digital images taken earlier.
Another approach is for one official to read all the votes on a ballot aloud, to one or more other staff, who tally the counts for each candidate. The reader and talliers read and tally all contests, before going on to the next ballot. A variant is to project the ballots where multiple people can see them to tally.
Another approach is for three or more people to look at and tally ballots independently; if a majority (Arizona) or all (Germany) agree on their tallies after a certain number of ballots, that result is accepted; otherwise they re-tally.
A variant of all approaches is to scan all the ballots and release a file of the images, so anyone can count them. Parties and citizens can count these images by hand or by software. The file gives them evidence to resolve discrepancies. The fact that different parties and citizens count with independent systems protects against errors from bugs and hacks. A checksum for the file identifies true copies. Election machines which scan ballots typically create such image files automatically, though those images can be hacked or be subject to bugs if the election machine is hacked or has bugs. Independent scanners can also create image files. Copies of ballots are known to be available for release in many parts of the United States. The press obtained copies of many ballots in the 2000 Presidential election in Florida to recount after the Supreme Court halted official recounts. Different methods resulted in different winners.
If counting is not done immediately, or if courts accept challenges which can require re-examination of ballots, the ballots need to be securely stored, which is problematic.
Australia federal elections count ballots at least twice, at the polling place and, starting Monday night after election day, at counting centres.
Repeated tests have found that the tedious and repetitive nature of hand counting leads to a loss of focus and accuracy over time. A 2023 test in Mohave County, Arizona used 850 ballots, averaging 36 contests each, that had been machine-counted many times. The hand count used seven experienced poll workers: one reader with two watchers, and two talliers with two watchers.
The results included 46 errors not noticed by the counting team, including:
Similar tallying errors were reported in Indiana and Texas election hand counts. Errors were 3% to 27% for various candidates in a 2016 Indiana race, because the tally sheet labels misled officials into over-counting groups of five tally marks, and officials sometimes omitted absentee ballots or double-counted ballots. 12 of 13 precincts in the 2024 Republican primary in Gillespie County, TX, were added or written down wrong after a hand count, including two precincts with seven contests wrong and one with six contests wrong. While the Texas errors were caught and corrected before results were finalized, the Indiana errors were not.
Average errors in hand-counted candidate tallies in New Hampshire towns were 2.5% in 2002, including one town with errors up to 20%. Omitting that town cut the average error to 0.87%. Only the net result for each candidate in each town could be measured, by assuming the careful manual recount was fully accurate. Total error can be higher if there were countervailing errors hidden in the net result, but net error in the overall electorate is what determines winners. Connecticut towns in 2007 to 2013 had similar errors up to 2%.
In candidate tallies for precincts in Wisconsin recounted by hand in 2011 and 2016, the average net discrepancy was 0.28% in 2011 and 0.18% in 2016.
India hand tallies paper records from a 1.5% sample of election machines before releasing results. For each voter, the machine prints the selected candidate on a slip of paper, displays it to the voter, then drops the slip into a box. In the April–May 2019 elections for the lower house of Parliament, the Lok Sabha, the Election Commission hand-tallied the slips of paper from 20,675 voting machines (out of 1,350,000 machines) and found discrepancies for 8 machines, usually of four votes or less. Most machines tally over 16 candidates, and they did not report how many of these candidate tallies were discrepant. They formed investigation teams to report within ten days, were still investigating in November 2019, with no report as of June 2021. Hand tallies before and after 2019 had a perfect match with machine counts.
An experiment with multiple types of ballots counted by multiple teams found average errors of 0.5% in candidate tallies when one person, watched by another, read to two people tallying independently. Almost all these errors were overcounts. The same ballots had errors of 2.1% in candidate tallies from sort and stack. These errors were equally divided between undercounts and overcounts of the candidates. Optical scan ballots, which were tallied by both methods, averaged 1.87% errors, equally divided between undercounts and overcounts. Since it was an experiment, the true numbers were known. Participants thought that having the candidate names printed in larger type and bolder than the office and party would make hand tallies faster and more accurate.
Intentional errors hand tallying election results are fraud. Close review by observers, if allowed, may detect fraud, and the observers may or may not be believed. If only one person sees each ballot and reads off its choice, there is no check on that person's mistakes. In the US only Massachusetts and the District of Columbia give anyone but officials a legal right to see ballot marks during hand counting. If fraud is detected and proven, penalties may be light or delayed. US prosecution policy since the 1980s has been to let fraudulent winners take office and keep office, usually for years, until convicted, and to impose sentencing level 8–14, which earns less than two years of prison.
In 1934, the United States had been hand-counting ballots for over 150 years, and problems were described in a report by Joseph P. Harris, who 20 years later invented a punched card voting machine,
| Errors in hand-counted tallies for candidates |
| wtd avg is sum of absolute values of errors, divided by total ballots |
| 20% in one town; others average 0.87% |
| "routinely show up to 2% error" |
| As % of all 120 ballots, not candidate's ballots |
| As % of all 120 ballots, not candidate's ballots |
| As % of all 120 ballots, not candidate's ballots |
| Table 6 "0.59% of the ballots" "out of 3,019" where 3,019 is total number of ballots |
| Table 7a. "0.59% of the ballots" but 0.18% if exclude write-ins |
| Over-counted groups of 5 tally marks, and omitted or double-counted groups of ballots |
| Errors by audit boards in determining voter intent on individual ballots. No manual totals done. |
| Errors by audit boards in determining voter intent on individual ballots. No manual totals done. |
| They investigated and have not released analysis, so it is not clear how many of these were errors in hand tally. |
| Errors by audit boards in determining voter intent on individual ballots. No manual totals done. |
Audit & machine count were contracted by state Senate
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> Full article |
| 46 errors were 0.15% of 30,600 contest totals on 850 test ballots. |
Typical times in the table below range from a tenth to a quarter of a minute per vote tallied, so 24-60 ballots per hour per team, if there are 10 votes per ballot.
One experiment with identical ballots of various types and multiple teams found that sorting ballots into stacks took longer and had more errors than two people reading to two talliers.
| Staff Time Needed for Hand Counts | |
| Team size & total errors not given. Hand & machine counts of Early Vote for Wes Bradford matched at 517, but certified results showed 520 and tally sheets showed 518. Two other ballots in a precinct batch were omitted from hand and machine counts. Total of 11 were uncounted. | |
| 1 reads to 4–7. No report available, so times may be under-reported. Not on graph. | |
| 1 reads to 4–7. No report available, so times may be under-reported. Not on graph. | |
| Organizing ballot scans for review, training, legal, supervision | |
p.4 says 46 errors were missed by tally team, and only known because the 850 test ballots had been repeatedly counted in Logic & Accuracy Tests. "Some of the observed errors included:
| |
| Organizing ballots for review, training, legal, supervision, adding tally sheets | |
| Add 60% to cover: supervision 43% + training 13% + sums 4% | |
| 8 teams of 2 plus 4 extra | |
| Organizing ballots for review, training, legal, supervision, adding tally sheets (10 teams of 2 | |
| 16 teams of 2+2 runners+4 tallies | |
| Includes counting number of voters who checked in at polling places, and comparing those counts to ballot counts. | |
| Independent count, done by graduate student on university computer | |
| Organizing ballots for review, training, legal, supervision, adding tally sheets | |
| Organizing ballots for review, training, legal, supervision, adding tally sheets | |
| Organizing ballots for review, training, legal, supervision, adding tally sheets | |
| Organizing ballots for review, training, legal, supervision, adding tally sheets | |
| Organizing ballot scans for review, training, legal, supervision | |
| Organizing ballot scans for review, training, legal, supervision | |
| Independent count, done by graduate student on university computer | |
| Independent count, done by graduate student on university computer | |
There is no record of individual votes to check.
An Estonian study compared the staff, computer, and other costs of different ways of voting to the numbers of voters, and found highest costs per vote were in lightly used, heavily staffed early in-person voting. Lowest costs per vote were in internet voting and in-person voting on election day at local polling places, because of the large numbers of voters served by modest staffs. For internet voting they do not break down the costs. They show steps to decrypt internet votes and imply but do not say they are hand-counted.
The voter may mark the paper directly, usually in a specific location for each candidate, either by filling in an oval or by using a patterned stamp that can be easily detected by OCR software.
Or the voter may pick one pre-marked ballot among many, each with its own barcode or QR code corresponding to a candidate.
Or the voter may select choices on an electronic screen, which then prints the chosen names, usually with a bar code or QR code summarizing all choices, on a sheet of paper to put in the scanner. This screen and printer is called an electronic ballot marker (EBM) or ballot marking device (BMD), and voters with disabilities can communicate with it by headphones, large buttons, sip and puff, or paddles, if they cannot interact with the screen or paper directly. Typically the ballot marking device does not store or tally votes. The paper it prints is the official ballot, put into a scanning system which counts the barcodes, or the printed names can be hand-counted, as a check on the machines. Most voters do not look at the paper to ensure it reflects their choices, and when there is a mistake, an experiment found that 81% of registered voters do not report errors to poll workers.
Two companies, Hart and Clear Ballot, have scanners which count the printed names, which voters had a chance to check, rather than bar codes and QR codes, which voters are unable to check.
Software can miscount; if it miscounts drastically enough, people notice and check. Staff rarely can say who caused an error, so they do not know whether it was accidental or a hack. Errors from 2002 to 2008 were listed and analyzed by the Brennan Center in 2010. There have been numerous examples before and since.
Researchers find security flaws in all election computers, which let voters, staff members or outsiders disrupt or change results, often without detection. Security reviews and audits are discussed in Electronic voting in the United States#Security reviews.
When a ballot marking device prints a bar code or QR code along with candidate names, the candidates are represented in the bar code or QR code as numbers, and the scanner counts those codes, not the names. If a bug or hack makes the numbering system in the ballot marking device not aligned with the numbering system in the scanner, votes will be tallied for the wrong candidates. This numbering mismatch has appeared with direct recording electronic machines (below).
Some US states check a small number of places by hand-counting or use of machines independent of the original election machines.
Recreating ballots is sometimes called reconstructing ballots, ballot replication, ballot remaking or ballot transcription. The term "duplicate ballot" sometimes refers to these recreated ballots, and sometimes to extra ballots erroneously given to or received from a voter.
Recreating can be done manually, or by scanners with manual review.
/ref>
or closely observed by bipartisan teams.
/ref>
When auditing an election, audits need to be done with the original ballots, not the recreated ones.
If most voters mark their own paper ballots and one marking device is available at each polling place for voters with disabilities, Georgia's total cost of machines and maintenance for 10 years, starting 2020, has been estimated at $12 per voter ($84 million total). Pre-printed ballots for voters to mark would cost $4 to $20 per voter ($113 million to $224 million total machines, maintenance and printing). The low estimate includes $0.40 to print each ballot, and more than enough ballots for historic turnout levels. the high estimate includes $0.55 to print each ballot, and enough ballots for every registered voter, including three ballots (of different parties) for each registered voter in primary elections with historically low turnout. The estimate is $29 per voter ($203 million total) if all voters use ballot marking devices, including $0.10 per ballot for paper.
The capital cost of machines in 2019 in Pennsylvania is $11 per voter if most voters mark their own paper ballots and a marking device is available at each polling place for voters with disabilities, compared to $23 per voter if all voters use ballot marking devices. This cost does not include printing ballots.
New York has an undated comparison of capital costs and a system where all voters use ballot marking devices costing over twice as much as a system where most do not. The authors say extra machine maintenance would exacerbate that difference, and printing cost would be comparable in both approaches. Their assumption of equal printing costs differs from the Georgia estimates of $0.40 or $0.50 to print a ballot in advance, and $0.10 to print it in a ballot marking device.
The system may also provide a means for communicating with a central location for reporting results and receiving updates, 2005 Voluntary Voting System Guidelines from the US Election Assistance Commission which is an access point for hacks and bugs to arrive.
Some of these machines also print names of chosen candidates on paper for the voter to verify. These names on paper can be used for and if needed. The tally of the voting data is stored in a removable memory component and in bar codes on the paper tape. The paper tape is called a Voter-verified paper audit trail (VVPAT). The VVPATs can be counted at 20–43 seconds of staff time per vote (not per ballot).
For machines without VVPAT, there is no record of individual votes to check.
For paper ballots officials decide if the voter's intent is clear, since voters may mark lightly, or circle their choice, instead of marking as instructed. The ballot may be visible to observers to ensure agreement, by webcam or passing around a table, or the process may be private. In the US only Massachusetts and the District of Columbia give anyone but officials a legal right to see ballot marks during hand counting. For optical scans, the software has rules to interpret voter intent, based on the darkness of marks. Software may ignore circles around a candidate name, and paper dust or broken sensors can cause marks to appear or disappear, not where the voter intended.
Officials also check if the number of voters checked in at the polling place matches the number of ballots voted, and that the votes plus remaining unused ballots matches the number of ballots sent to the polling place. If not, they look for the extra ballots, and may report discrepancies.
Election storage often uses tamper-evident seals, although seals can typically be removed and reapplied without damage, especially in the first 48 hours. Photos taken when the seal is applied can be compared to photos taken when the seal is opened. Detecting subtle tampering requires substantial training. Election officials usually take too little time to examine seals, and observers are too far away to check seal numbers, though they could compare old and new photos projected on a screen. If seal numbers and photos are kept for later comparison, these numbers and photos need their own secure storage. Seals can also be forged. Seals and locks can be cut so observers cannot trust the storage. If the storage is breached, election results cannot be checked and corrected.
Experienced testers can usually bypass all physical security systems. LocksThere are several sources on lock vulnerabilities:
and camerasSecurity camera flaws have been covered extensively:
are vulnerable before and after delivery.
Guards can be bribed or blackmailed. Insider threats
and the difficulty of following all security procedures are usually under-appreciated, and most organizations do not want to learn their vulnerabilities.
Security recommendations include preventing access by anyone alone, which would typically require two hard-to-pick locks, and having keys held by independent officials if such officials exist in the jurisdiction; having storage risks identified by people other than those who design or manage the system; and using background checks on staff.
No US state has adequate laws on physical security of the ballots.
Starting the tally soon after voting ends makes it feasible for independent parties to guard storage sites.Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) policy calls for independent foreign officials to sleep with ballots, and allows parties to do so:
Turkish opposition sleeping with balllots:
Republicans guarded warehouse of voted ballots in 2000 in Florida and had state police lock up ballots in New Mexico:
Postal voting is common worldwide, though France stopped it in the 1970s because of concerns about ballot security. Voters who receive a ballot at home may also hand-deliver it or have someone else to deliver it. The voter may be forced or paid to vote a certain way, or ballots may be changed or lost during the delivery process, or delayed so they arrive too late to be counted or for signature mis-matches to be resolved.
Postal voting lowered turnout in California by 3%. It raised turnout in Oregon only in Presidential election years by 4%, turning occasional voters into regular voters, without bringing in new voters. Election offices do not mail to people who have not voted recently, and letter carriers do not deliver to recent movers they do not know, omitting mobile populations.
Some jurisdictions let ballots be sent to the election office by email, fax, internet or app. Email and fax are highly insecure. Internet so far has also been insecure, including in Switzerland, Australia, and Estonia. Apps try to verify the correct voter is using the app by name, date of birth and signature, which are widely available for most voters, so can be faked; or by name, ID and video selfie, which can be faked by loading a pre-recorded video. Apps have been particularly criticized for operating on insecure phones, and pretending to more security during transmission than they have.
|
|
