Why Hand Counting Ballots is a Terrible Idea
Paid Subscribers Edition
Picking a story to make sure paying subscribers didn’t miss this week couldn’t have been easier. On Friday—in a move that left me as shell-shocked as any election or democracy-related news since January 6th—the Georgia Election Board ordered that all ballots in the state must be hand-counted in the upcoming election.
Counting ballots by hand doesn’t sound so insane, right? Not so fast. (Literally. As we’ll see below, one of the problems with hand counting is that it’s slow and delays results.)
The idea that hand counting promotes safe and secure elections is one of the biggest and potentially most damaging election integrity myths of 2024.
Let’s talk about why…
Who Supports Hand Counting?
Before explaining why hand counting is such a threat, let’s see what we can learn about the hand counting movement just by who supports and opposes it:
Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger opposes hand counts.
Georgia’s Republican Attorney General Chris Carr said hand counting would be illegal under Georgia law.
Local election officials oppose hand-counting. The lone Democrat on the Georgia Election Board voted against the rule, as did the board’s nonpartisan chair.
The only officials who support the rule are the three GOP members of the Georgia Election Board who Donald Trump has praised at his rallies.
The situation is similar in other states, with pro-hand-count movements taking hold almost exclusively in places where pro-Trump election deniers are in power.