It's interesting if they think counting them by hand somehow makes sure they're accurate? I think it would be more challenging to make sure zero human counters cheat the system and report false numbers than to make sure some software works properly and isn't tampered with.
This was covered above. The physical count is very closely observed:
As a volunteer with one of the parties, I want to add that each political party can send a "scrutineer" to watch the counting at a given polling station.
The Elections Canada worker (poster above) puts the ballot on the table and say "Liberal" / "Conservative" or whatever is marked on the ballot. (Or "spoiled" if they have left it blank, or written "I VOTE FOR ME" across the whole thing, or something else other than marking it properly.)
The scrutineers just watch, unless they see a problem, like an ambiguously marked ballot they think should go to their party (or not go to another party).
99.9% of the time the vote is very obvious and there is no debate. (It is fine to mark with a check, an X, filling in the whole circle, as long as one and only one option is marked.)
Maybe once in an election night at a polling station there will be a ballot that gets a few minutes of discussion. In theory, this could escalate to a supervisor, but I have never seen that happen in the several elections I've worked as a party scrutineer, with many thousands of ballots counted.
I knew Canada only had paper ballots for elections which doesn't seem that crazy. One ballot, one vote is a secure system.
But then I just read they count them all by hand. That seems nuts to me. No machines to speed up the process and you still will count the most of them the day of the election well before the US?
Are the counters volunteers? Likely saves a ton of dollars as well if they are. Just shows how a more complicated system the US (where we have tons of different systems for counting ballots) can be more expensive and less effective than a simpler one.
I don't see why you wouldn't use some scantron system to count the ballots but if it's not needed why do it?
Voting in Canada is incredibly easy. I have never had to wait to vote in a federal or provincial election. Mostly very friendly volunteers working. You have to show ID to vote as well, which never seems to be a problem with anyone or slow things down. results come in pretty quickly too.
India (640 million voters and geographically FAR bigger than California) counts in a day. And they require voter ID. Our elections in "certain" (blue) states are laughable.
🚨 UPDATE: Governor candidate Steve Hilton just said he plans to ABOLISH the weeks-long California vote counting if elected
GOOD! Be like Florida!
HILTON: "India counts over 640 million votes in a day. California cannot count less than 10 million votes in a month!"
I knew Canada only had paper ballots for elections which doesn't seem that crazy. One ballot, one vote is a secure system.
But then I just read they count them all by hand. That seems nuts to me. No machines to speed up the process and you still will count the most of them the day of the election well before the US?
Are the counters volunteers? Likely saves a ton of dollars as well if they are. Just shows how a more complicated system the US (where we have tons of different systems for counting ballots) can be more expensive and less effective than a simpler one.
I don't see why you wouldn't use some scantron system to count the ballots but if it's not needed why do it?
Canada is a lot smaller than the US. The people theere don't give sh*t (not typing the whole word because ai moderation censors it) about politics. Politics are a lot more simple there and less polarized. Big difference.
Lucky for them that they don't have someone like trump in office.