Ballot Hand Counts Lead to Inaccuracy

Re:Ballot Hand Counts Lead to Inaccuracy by mb7733 on Tuesday August 19, 2025 @09:43AM (#44951456)

I worked as a poll clerk in a Canadian federal election once and counted ballots and the experience left me with full confidence in the system. It would be impossible to game on a large scale and incredibly difficult on a small scale.

From what I recall, our polling station, which served only a small portion of the city, was broken into several polls, each run by 2 or 3 poll workers.

At then end of the day the poll workers personally counted the ballots they collected at their poll (so every ballot was counted at least twice, and each individual only counted a fraction of the ballots at the station.) Monitors from the different political parties were free to watch the whole process.

I'm definitely getting some details wrong, but generally the whole thing, plus automatic recounts for tight races left no doubts for me.

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Re:Ballot Hand Counts Lead to Inaccuracy by mmastrac on Tuesday August 19, 2025 @09:50AM (#44951523)

I worked one election as a scrutineer and came away with the same thought. It's an amazing ballet of process that is challenging to hack, and it makes me irrationally upset whenever I see politicians here trying to import vote irregularity BS from elsewhere.

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