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 | The examples and perspective in this article deal primarily with the United States and do not represent a worldwide view of the subject. (May 2022) |
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| Voting |
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Vote counting is the process of counting votes in an election. It can be done manually or by machines. 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.[1]
Counts are simplest in elections where just one choice is on the ballot, and these are often counted manually. In elections where many choices are 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 hacks. 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 multiple claims by Republican Party members of error or voter fraud in 2020 and 2021, a robust examination of the voting process in multiple U.S. states, including Arizona[2] (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.
Manual counting
Manual counting, also known as hand-counting, requires a physical ballot that represents voter intent. The physical ballots are taken out of ballot boxes and/or envelopes, read and interpreted; then results are tallied.[3] Manual counting may be used for election audits and recounts in areas where automated counting systems are used.[4]
Manual methods
One method of manual counting is to sort ballots in piles by candidate, and count the number of ballots in each pile. If there is more than one contest on the same sheet of paper, the sorting and counting are repeated for each contest.[5] This method has been used in Burkina Faso, Russia, Sweden, United States (Minnesota), and Zimbabwe.[6]
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.[6] 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.[4] A variant is to project the ballots where multiple people can see them to tally.[7][8]
Another approach is for three or more people to look at and tally ballots independently; if a majority agree on their tallies after a certain number of ballots, that result is accepted; otherwise they all re-tally.[9]
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.[10] [11] 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.[12] Election machines which scan ballots typically create such image files automatically,[13] 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.[14][15][16] The press obtained copies of many ballots in the 2000 Presidential election in Florida to recount after the Supreme Court halted official recounts.[17] Different methods resulted in different winners.
When manual counts happen
The tallying may be done at night at the end of the last day of voting, as in Britain,[18] Canada,[19] France,[20] Germany,[21] and Spain,[22] or the next day,[6] or 1–2 weeks later in the US, after provisional ballots have been adjudicated.[23]
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.[24][25]
Errors in manual counts
Hand-counting can be boring, so officials lose track, or they fail to read their own tally sheets correctly at the end of the process.
A 2023 test in Mohave County, Arizona, used 850 ballots, averaging 36 contests each, from logic & accuracy tests, so they had been machine-counted many times. The hand county used 7 experienced poll workers: 1 reader with 2 watchers, 2 talliers with 2 watchers. There were 46 errors in contest totals which were not noticed by the counting team, including:[26]
- "Caller called the wrong candidate and both watchers failed to notice the incorrect call;
- Tally markers tried to work out inconsistencies while tallying;
- Tally markers marked a vote for an incorrect candidate and the watchers failed to notice the error;
- Caller calling too fast resulted in double marking a candidate or missed marking a candidate;
- Caller missed calling a vote for a candidate and both watchers failed to notice the omission;
- Watchers not watching the process due to boredom or fatigue;
- Illegible tally marking caused incorrect tally totaling;
- Enunciation of names caused incorrect candidate tally; and
- Using incorrect precinct tally sheets to tally ballots resulted in incorrect precinct level results."
Some of these tallying errors were also reported in Indiana and Texas elections. 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 5 tally marks, and officials sometimes omitted absentee ballots or double-counted ballots.[27] 12 of 13 precincts in the 2024 Republican primary in Gillespie County, TX, were added or written down wrong after a handcount, including two precincts with seven contests wrong and one with six contests wrong.[28] These Texas errors were caught and corrected before results were final. The Indiana ones were not.
Average errors in 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.[29] Connecticut towns in 2007 to 2013 had similar errors up to 2%.[30]
Errors were smaller in candidate tallies for precincts in Wisconsin recounted in 2011 and 2016. The average net discrepancy was 0.28% of the recount tally in 2011 and 0.18% in 2016.[31]
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, and drops the slip into a box. In the April–May 2019 elections for the lower house of Congress, the Lok Sabha, the Election Commission hand-tallied the slips of paper from 20,675 voting machines (out of 1,350,000 machines)[32] and found discrepancies for 8 machines, usually of four votes or less.[33] Most machines tally over 16 candidates,[34] 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.[33][35] Hand tallies before and after 2019 had a perfect match with machine counts.[33]
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.[36]
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.[37] 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.[38] 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,[39] [40] and to impose sentencing level 8-14,[41] which earns less than two years of prison.[42]
| Place | Year | Candidate tally errors, as % of votes counted | Reference Standard | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| New Hampshire towns | 1946-1962 | 0.83% | careful hand recount | wtd avg is sum of absolute values of errors, divided by total ballots[29] |
| New Hampshire towns | 2002 | 2.49% | careful hand recount | 20% in one town; others average 0.87%[29] |
| Connecticut towns | 2007-2013 | up to 2% | investigations of differences between hand & machine counts | "routinely show up to 2% error"[30] |
| Experiment, optical scan style ballots | 2011 | 1.87% | Known values in experiment | As % of all 120 ballots, not candidate's ballots[36] |
| Experiment, read to talliers | 2011 | 0.48% | Known values in experiment | As % of all 120 ballots, not candidate's ballots[36] |
| Experiment, sort & stack | 2011 | 2.13% | Known values in experiment | As % of all 120 ballots, not candidate's ballots[36] |
| Wisconsin precincts | 2011 | 0.28% | careful hand recount | Table 6 "0.59% of the ballots" "out of 3,019" where 3,019 is total number of ballots[31] |
| Wisconsin precincts | 2016 | 0.18% | careful hand recount | Table 7a. "0.59% of the ballots" but 0.18% if exclude write-ins[31] |
| Indiana, Jeffersonville | 2016 | 3%-27% | Newspaper tally | Over-counted groups of 5 tally marks, and omitted or double-counted groups of ballots[27] |
| Colorado audits | 2018 | 0.8% | Consensus between election computer & Sec of State staff | Errors by audit boards in determining voter intent on individual ballots. No manual totals done.[43] |
| Colorado audits | 2019 | 0.2% | Consensus between election computer & Sec of State staff | Errors by audit boards in determining voter intent on individual ballots. No manual totals done.[43] |
| India national election audit | 2019 | 8[33] of 20,625 machines audited[32] | Discrepancy between hand tally of VVPATs & election computers | They investigated and have not released analysis, so it is not clear how many of these were errors in hand tally.[33] |
| Colorado audits | 2020 | 0.6% | Consensus between election computer & Sec of State staff | Errors by audit boards in determining voter intent on individual ballots. No manual totals done.[44] |
| Maricopa County, AZ audit | 2021 | 15% | Paper-counting machine | Audit & machine count were contracted by state Senate[45][46] |
| Mohave County, AZ, experiment | 2023 | 0.15% | Logic & Accuracy Test ballots | 46 errors were 0.15% of 30,600 contest totals on 850 test ballots.[26] |
Data in the table are comparable, because average error in candidate tallies as percent of candidate tallies, weighted by number of votes for each candidate (in NH) is mathematically the same as the sum of absolute values of errors in each candidate's tally, as percent of all ballots (in other studies).
Time needed and cost of manual counts
Cost depends on pay levels and staff time needed, recognizing that staff generally work in teams of two to four (one to read, one to watch, and one or two to record votes). Teams of four, with two to read and two to record are more secure[36][47] and would increase costs. Three to record might more quickly resolve discrepancies, if 2 of the 3 agree. 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.[36]
| Team (Wall Clock) Minutes per Vote Checked | Team Size | Staff Minutes per Vote Checked | Number of Contests Checked per Ballot | Full Precincts /Batches, or Random Ballots | Type of Paper Ballot | Number of Ballots Checked | Total Staff Time, Minutes | Year | Sources | Overheads Excluded & Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Butler Cnty, PA, Butler City | 0.02 | 6 | 0.09 | 8 | Full batches | Sheets | 600 | 450 | 2022 | [48][49] | 1 reads to 4-7. No report available, so times may be under-reported. Not on graph. |
| Butler Cnty, PA, Donegal Twp | 0.02 | 4 | 0.08 | 8 | Full batches | Sheets | 1,061 | 660 | 2022 | [48][49] | 1 reads to 4-7. No report available, so times may be under-reported. Not on graph. |
| Dane County, WI | 0.04 | 5 | 0.20 | 1 | Full sets of images | Sheets | 1000 | 200 | 2015 | [7][8] | Organizing ballot scans for review, training, legal, supervision |
| Mohave County, AZ, experiment | 0.05 | 7 | 0.34 | 36 | Full batches | Sheets | 850 | 10,266 | 2023 | [50] | Excludes: detecting & retallying errors missed by team, space rental, paying workers to attend training, entering data on computer for web & SOS, creating blank tally sheets for each precinct. They estimate the following would add 33% to direct tallying cost: supervision, summation, sorting ballots by precinct, guards, transportation, background checks, webcams, recruitment |
| Maricopa County, AZ recount | 0.08 | 5 | 0.42 | 2 | Full batches | Sheets | 1 | 0.83 | 2021 | [51] | Organizing ballots for review, training, legal, supervision, adding tally sheets |
| New Hampshire | 0.09 | 3 | 0.27 | 20 | Full batches | Sheets | 627 | 3,360 | 2007 | [47][52] | Add 60% to cover: supervision 43% + training 13% + sums 4% |
| Carlisle, MA | 0.11 | 2 | 0.22 | 9 | Full batches | Sheets | 3,670 | 7,200 | 2020 | 8 teams of 2 plus 4 extra | |
| Hancock, MA | 0.13 | 2 | 0.26 | 9 | Full batches | Sheets | 513 | 1,200 | 2020 | Organizing ballots for review, training, legal, supervision, adding tally sheets (10 teams of 2 | |
| Provincetown, MA | 0.14 | 2 | 0.28 | 11 | Full batches | Sheets | 2,616 | 7,980 | 2020 | 16 teams of 2+2 runners+4 tallies | |
| Tolland, CT | 0.11 | 7 | Full batches | Sheets | 3851 | 2,880 | 2012 | [30] | |||
| Bloomfield, CT | 0.15 | 7 | Full batches | Sheets | 2272 | 2,400 | 2012 | [30] | |||
| Vernon, CT | 0.31 | 6 | Full batches | Sheets | 2544 | 4,740 | 2012 | [30] | |||
| Bridgeport, CT | 0.40 | 5 | 2.01 | 1 | Full batches | Sheets | 23860 | 48,000 | 2010 | [53] | Includes counting number of voters who checked in at polling places, and comparing those counts to ballot counts. |
| Bibb County, GA | 0.18 | 3 | 0.54 | 39 | Full batches | Rolls | 592 | 12,480 | 2006 | [54] | |
| Camden County, GA | 0.11 | 3 | 0.33 | 34 | Full batches | Rolls | 470 | 5,220 | 2006 | [54] | |
| Cobb County, GA | 0.20 | 3 | 0.60 | 42 | Full batches | Rolls | 976 | 24,480 | 2006 | [54] | |
| San Diego precincts | 0.22 | 3 | 0.67 | 19 | Full batches | Sheets | 2,425 | 30,573 | 2016 | [55] | |
| Clark County, NV | 0.72 | 21 | Full batches | Rolls | 1,268 | 19,200 | 2004 | [56] | |||
| Washington State recount | 1.49 | 1 | Full batches | Sheets | 1,842,136 | 2,741,460 | 2004 | [56] | |||
| Orange County, CA | 1.93 | 1 | Full, mostly | Rolls mostly | 467 | 900 | Zdroj:https://en.wikipedia.org?pojem=Vote_counting