Do we really need instant election returns? (About voting, not politics.)

[NotUrsula]

As I'm sure everyone knows by now, there are two recounts going on in Florida, because it turns out that the state (like many others) actually didn't finish counting votes by 10 pm on Election Day, and it turns out that the totals were actually much closer than originally thought.

Every time Election Day rolls around, I get exasperated with the news process and the ridiculous race to be the first to tell us who won, even when that "news" is essentially a wild guess. (I'm not picking on any particular media outlet here -- they ALL do it.)

We get exit polls, and minute-by-minute updates as each precinct reports, and most annoying of all in Presidential Elections, the "calling" of what candidate will carry each state. In reality, because the process of counting votes in all but the tiniest communities is a process of very complicated logistics, it almost never gets completely finished before midnight on Election Night, or even by the end of the following day. In most states, state law allows at least a couple of weeks to count every vote, and in many of them, it does take that long.

I'm interested in politics, and anxious to know how elections turn out, but I honestly would prefer election boards to wait until ALL votes are certified before they release any returns, even if that process takes a couple of weeks, rather than having them rush to serve a half-baked pie. This is serious business, and IMO, we should be serious about getting it right the first time.

Newly elected officials never take office the day after being elected, so what's the rush? There is time to wait a while and be sure that no one has to retract an election announcement.

 

[bcla]

There are two things at play.

One is that we can get almost immediate results for election day polling because they're either touch screens that keep a running total, as well as optical scan ballots that are scanned on site by the voter before leaving. This provides immediate data that can be quickly sent to the registrar. I remember when my wife served as an poll inspector, which meant we had to collect (from the elections warehouse), hold the sealed ballot boxes overnight, and deliver them to the polling place. But this was a few years back when the inspector waited for elections workers to come collect the ballot boxes to be tabulated at the registrar.

Another is that a lot more people are voting by mail, which presents issues - especially when election law typically requires matching the signature on the ballot envelope to the signature on file from registration. That slows thing down a lot. Plus there are different laws on when the mail-in ballot must be postmarked and/or received. You'll also get people voting out of precinct (which requires disqualifying voting for elections out of the precinct and won't allow voting for elections that aren't on that ballot) as well as drop off mail-in ballots sent to the right polling place or even anywhere in the state (for my state). Some of this voting may take a week or so to sort out.

 

[moon]

What we need is to have every vote counted. I agree with you OP that it should be that way even if it takes a couple of weeks.

 

[ICF]

What we need is to have every vote counted. I agree with you OP that it should be that way even if it takes a couple of weeks.

exactly......don't worry about calling it early.....call it accurately.

 

[mom2rb]

I want all paper ballots, even if it take awhile to know the results. My voting site uses machines that don’t print a ballot. I want a paper trail and proof that my vote is exactly as I wanted it.

 

[kdonnel]

What we need is to have every vote counted.

Every legal vote, not every vote.

 

[kdonnel]

We also need to redo our primary and voting systems.

We need top 4 jungle primaries. Put all the candidates on one primary ballot and force them to appeal to all voters, not just the voters from their party. Send the top 4 onto the real race. This forces the candidates to take and follow through with promises and ideals that appeal to a broader spectrum of voters.

Then have ranked choice voting for the actual election. The voter ranks the candidates in preferred order. If after the votes are counted one candidate does not have 50% of the vote, you redistribute the votes for the last place candidate to the voters second choice. Repeat until someone has at least 50%. No more costly run offs. No more feeling like if you vote for the libertarian or independent that you are throwing away your vote.

 

[CarolAnn856]

Every legal vote, not every vote.

Exactly. Which, of course, is the vast, vast majority of votes. I'm concerned that it seems like many people are willing to sacrifice legal votes for the urban legend of hoards of illegal votes. It simply isn't true at all, and it denys many people their voting rights. I'd much prefer a longer counting process that ensures voters' voices are heard over the race to finish quickly.

 

[CarolAnn856]

I would also like to see primaries all voted on the same day. Stretching it out made sense when candidates traveled by horse. I hate that late-voting states really get no input at all.

 

[bcla]

I want all paper ballots, even if it take awhile to know the results. My voting site uses machines that don’t print a ballot. I want a paper trail and proof that my vote is exactly as I wanted it.

I remember when I voted in the primary this year my polling place ran out of paper ballots. I waited about a half hour for the poll workers to properly set up the single touchscreen machine they had onsite where I was the first in line to use it. It was actually pretty easy once it was ready. My system was really designed for blind voters with optional headphones or voters who wanted instructions in a different language, but we ended up using them because of the lack of ballots. It looked like this photo (of a Dominion ImageCast ICX) from the Michigan Dept of State website:

They were trying to use some sort of smart card in the lower slot to set up the machine to accept a vote, and were busy looking up the instructions from a poll worker manual. I suppose they didn't necessarily train everyone on them since they weren't necessarily used. But once it was working it was a breeze to cast my vote and move on to the next choices. A few times I deliberately undervoted and it asked me if I really wanted to do that. When I was done it printed out a piece of paper that had all my choices in an easily read format, and the procedure was to place it in a slot in the back of the optical reader. From what I could tell, that was my vote, and it needed to be manually entered later on. The printout didn't have anything like scan machine marking, bubbles, QR code, barcodes, etc.

 

[kandb]

The longer the "voting process" takes after election day, the higher the risk for corruption, IMO.

 

[kandb]

I think our whole election system needs to be redone to make sure that every vote that is counted is a LEGAL vote. Honestly, I do not trust the election system anymore, sadly. (Or some of the people who run it.)

 

[Dancind]

The percentage of illegal ballots cast is minuscule. Much more likely that legal votes will be discarded, or not counted. I don't see a hurry, no one takes office for several months. We can wait for results, electronic voting machines can be easily hacked. The old fashioned way, with paper, and maybe scanners that aren't linked to the internet, is best. NM does it this way, they even audit the results. One of the best election systems in the country, after OR and WA which are mail in only.

 

[Ben E N]

I think our whole election system needs to be redone to make sure that every vote that is counted is a LEGAL vote. Honestly, I do not trust the election system anymore, sadly. (Or some of the people who run it.)

What exactly is this disbelief based on? Has there been evidence of rampant illegal voting that has affected elections, or is it just a general feeling that you have? I am asking because I am yet to hear of any impact that so called illegal votes have had on any election at any level.

 

[sam_gordon]

What we need is to have every vote counted. I agree with you OP that it should be that way even if it takes a couple of weeks.

Every vote gets counted now. However, if you know there are 'x' number of votes recorded, once someone gets a majority, the rest of the votes really don't matter. Sort of like if a football team is up 42 going into the 4th quarter, many fans will leave.

And you're confusing the actual voting process with the news process. The news process is what is pushing for the immediacy. They're the ones doing the exit polling and paying "experts" to look at trends in results to "call" a race (whether it be for President, Congress, Governor, or Dog Catcher). Even if results weren't going to be released for two weeks (for example), the exit polls would still be conducted (by the media and the campaigns) and "experts" will still try to predict who wins.

I don't know if it's county or state law here, but all the precincts have to post their totals at the precinct once the polls close. The Secretary of State (for the state) even has a website showing the official vote totals as they get turned in.

 

[Poohforyou]

I don't understand why Florida continues to have these problems. They have early voting and there's still problems.

 

[bcla]

I don't understand why Florida continues to have these problems. They have early voting and there's still problems.

The biggest issue around the country is late mailed-in ballots dropped off at the polling place. So that's as late as possible, it's dropped off, and then they need to worry about signature matching. That is a ridiculously slow process.

 

[NotUrsula]

I'm not sure why I'm seeing this bold-face emphasis on LEGAL, but for the purpose of this specific discussion, whether or not a vote is "legal" doesn't really matter -- what matters is making sure that you actually KNOW what the result is before you announce it. (And presumably, a vote that cannot be verified is not valid and thus will not be counted.)

My feeling is that if results are kept secret until every vote is verified, then cheating becomes much more difficult. In the history of postmortem voting, the biggest part of the technique was to send the surrogates around to the precincts where results were not going your way. As casting more votes than you have registered voters is a dead (pardon the pun) giveaway, you cannot just send fakes to every precinct just in case -- the cheating has to be targeted in order to have a chance at succeeding. (I agree with PP that that kind of voter fraud is really uncommon; it's very cumbersome and difficult to do right. Simply tricking voters into NOT voting for your opponent, or disposing of ballots, is the much easier and more effective path if you are going to play dirty. Think about it. Really. Try to figure out how you would cheat, and think of which strategy is more likely to give you the result you want. You'll see that eliminating real votes is far more viable a method than fabricating fake ones.)

Every vote gets counted now. However, if you know there are 'x' number of votes recorded, once someone gets a majority, the rest of the votes really don't matter. Sort of like if a football team is up 42 going into the 4th quarter, many fans will leave.

(Emphasis mine.) I think this is a big part of the problem; in many jurisdictions they don't know how many votes were cast at that point, because there are still bins of absentee votes sitting in a mailroom somewhere. Until they know how many of those there are, AND that the people sending them in have not voted in person, they don't know the number of votes recorded.

Also, I agree that the news process is pushing for immediacy, but if the government simply refuses to report, then the emperor's new clothes become apparent for what they are. Most people won't watch those "returns" if they KNOW that the only thing that the media has to go on is guesswork.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

I think this is a big part of the problem; in many jurisdictions they don't know how many votes were cast at that point, because there are still bins of absentee votes sitting in a mailroom somewhere. Until they know how many of those there are, AND that the people sending them in have not voted in person, they don't know the number of votes recorded.

Well a place should know exactly how many absentee and mail-in ballots were sent out. Sure they don't know how many will be submitted back in but if you have candidate A who has 50,000 in person votes and candidate B that has 20,000 in person votes (just using a 2-party for example's sake) and you have a combined total of 10,000 mail-in and absentee ballots those mail-in and absentee ballots that have still not come in or been accounted for won't matter because even if all 10,000 of those mail-in and absentee ballots went to candidate B that would still leave a 20,000 vote difference thus giving the win to candidate A.

 

[GreatLakes]

It is just a symptom of valuing speed over accuracy. It isn't only elections but also news in general. If something happens, the Sandy Hook shooting is a great example, you don't need to report every unsubstantiated rumor as news. Just slow down and make sure you are accurate so you don't name a totally innocent person as the shooter in that example.

The news needs to stop reporting rumor as news. Until you can confirm it with multiple credible sources don't <expletive deleted> report it.

Back on topic, I do think we need to make some small changes to the electoral process mostly around the primaries. I think every state should do away with registering as a party and have open primaries on the same day. I also think the party system as a whole is broken and a big part of our countries problems. The cost to run outside of the two major parties keeps a lot of good candidates off the ballot.