The people of South Carolina want transparency in their elections. The only way according to many information and computer experts is to hand-count hand-marked ballots.
First, we need to spread awareness that the only way we can trust our elections is for the public to view the counting of the ballots. Currently, the counting takes place in the tabulator. Can you see inside the tabulator? No, of course not. We have a rally at the state house on 1/9/23 from 10 AM to noon to show our legislators that they want us to address several election reforms. Here are the bills that we want them to support:
https://www.scsafeelections.org/updates/lets-pass-these-3-bills-for-election-integrity/
In addition, we will have a demonstration of the hand count process.
Grab some friends, carpool, and meet us there on Tuesday January 9th for fun, fellowship some great speeches.
Please let us know if you plan on attending so we have a good sense of head count.
Second, become educated in election matters.
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Notes from our hand count workshop
We had 2 teams of 4 work on hand counts of hand marked ballots. Two callers sit on one side of the table and two talliers across from them. The ballots were from actual 2022 races in Minnesota from ES&S (Printed absentee and Expressvote ADA compliant ballots). Each team counted in 50 ballot increments one race at a time.
Here are some observations:
Times ranged from 1:25 to just over 2 minutes. There is a tradeoff between productivity and accuracy and there seemed to be a nice cadence/pace at around 1:45-2 minutes. If you go faster it may lead to fatigue or inaccuracies. If too fast, it can create anxiety.
Note that if we can call each race and reconcile in 2 minutes for 50 ballots, s hundred ballots would be 4 minutes and 1000 ballots (assuming maximum approximate turnout of 70%) would result in would be 40 minutes. Assuming 10 races an election this would be a total time of around 400 minutes. This would take 6.67 hours but we rounded it up to 7 and 1/2 for breaks, etc. If you split that between 2 teams of 4 people that would be 3.75 hours to hand count a race. Worse case scenario would be 4 hours tops. All of it would be completed and you would just need to total the batches and send to the county.
We recommend that these counts be videotaped so that there is full transparency and verifiability and that all ballots are reconciled at the end.
We are collaborating with a few other states on this effort and will keep you posted on updates and progress. We expect to publish a whitepaper in January.
Watch here:
The only way we are going to fix our elections is for YOU to insist on more transparency and accountability. Get involved today.
Blessings,
SC Safe Elections Team