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| (US) 4/06 - hand count cost in $$$... |
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| Author |
Message |
    
regina schlitz
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Rs1971
Post Number: 1
Registered: 11-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Monday, November 7, 2005 - 4:12 pm: | 
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I am trying to find a study group that would support the cost effectiveness of a hand count to "audit" to verify the ballot is being counted properly . Man hours, wage per hour,how many ballots hand counted per hour etc.
For example how much it would cost to verify 100% of the ballots in 100% of the precincts if there are 300 precincts and 400,000 total registered voters. I am coming up with theories but no study group with actual data to support the theories. |
Bob Fleischer
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Rjf7r
Post Number: 29
Registered: 09-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Monday, November 7, 2005 - 4:53 pm: |
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Well, as a starting point, can you find out what it costs to count paper ballots in those jurisdictions that still use them? I think you'll have to go abroad to find really large jurisdictions that use paper ballots. I would think that "auditing" a decent paper record would be about the same level of effort. |
James Zukowski
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Jimz
Post Number: 158
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Monday, November 7, 2005 - 11:22 pm: |
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I have the raw data from questionnaires mailed out earlier this year. I have not completed the analysis of this information.
Peace!
James Zukowski
The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything.
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Samuel Scharff
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Abacus
Post Number: 25
Registered: 08-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, November 9, 2005 - 9:40 pm: |
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Hope this isn't redundant.
I think many Canadian polling place staff participants volunteer but have no definite figures. Anyway the overall costs here are probably ok.
"Canada shows U.S. how to count [2000]"
http://www.canoe.ca/CNEWSUSElection0011/28_canadianelection-ap.html
Summary numbers:
Registered voters - 21,243,473
Number of polling stations - 60,728
Average of registered voters per station (minimum of 250 per precinct)-350
Total ballots cast - 12,997,185
Average ballots cast per polling station - 214
Ballots rejected - 139,412 or 1.1% -
===
From “Follow the Money: Why the Best Voting Technology May Be No Technology at All
Public Broadcasting System, 12/11/03
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20031211.html
The 2002-2003 budget for Elections Canada is just over $57 million U.S. dollars, or $1.81 per Canadian citizen. It is extremely hard to get an equivalent per-citizen figure for U.S. elections, but trust me, it is a LOT higher. This week, San Francisco held a runoff mayoral election that cost $2.5 million, or $3.27 per citizen of the city. And this was for just one election, not a whole year of them.
Abacus
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Jo Anne Karasek
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Jo_anne_karasek
Post Number: 48
Registered: 08-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, December 8, 2005 - 12:11 am: |
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I found that one person can count single race/issue ballots at the rate of 100 per hour. Three people are necessary for counting to do a secure system of hand counting. Therefore, one person can do 33 ballots per hour.
33 ballots per hour at an arbitrary pay rate of $13 per hour (hourly rate estimated by a North Carolina election official) costs less than 40 cents an issue/race.
Compare that to the $3.27 per ballot rate for one ballot one race in San Francisco in November, 2005. |
Jason Aaron Osgood
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Zappini
Post Number: 2
Registered: 12-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, December 8, 2005 - 2:11 pm: |
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Hi Jo Anne.
I was a poll worker in King County (Wash) this year. We're paid someting close to minimum wage. There were 12 of us "judges" at our polling station. Standing around waiting for the AccuVote OS ballot scanner to finish doing its thing. Each tally takes about 40 minutes, times two for two copies. The polls close at 8:00pm, the last voter left around 8:15pm, and we shut down the polling station around 10:00pm.
For the primary, we had about 300 votes. For the general, 700. (Guesses, I don't remember exact.)
So here's some numbers. Assuming 3 per team, 12 people equals 4 counting teams. 700 ballots / 4 teams = 175 ballots per team. Assuming 100 ballots per hour per team, that's 1 h 45 m to manually count for our polling station. Round up to 2 hours.
Rough cost per ballot would be 12 people times 2 hours times mininum wage ($3.50?) divided by 700 equals about 12 cents per ballot.
Note that using us poll workers would be "free", since we're already paid to stand around.
For comparison...
King Co is buying 650 new DREs to comply with their interpretation of HAVA's disability requirements. I don't have the link handy, but I figured it'd cost somewhere around $7.50 per ballot, excluding maintenance and recurring costs. Quite the bargain, no?
---
zappini.blogspot.com
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Jo Anne Karasek
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Jo_anne_karasek
Post Number: 54
Registered: 08-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, December 8, 2005 - 3:49 pm: |
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Jason, thank you for all the information.
I was aware that voting machines didn't begin to be the bargain proponents tried to claim they were compared to hand count paper ballots.
I was also aware that probably most boards of election do not pay $13 per hour to the average poll worker. I just chose the $13 per hour because one North Carolina election official used that figure, which I suspect would be the highest conceivable average rate in the country. It represents a ceiling figure.
I am becoming more and more aware that the voting machines are, perhaps, most of the time not as fast as hand count paper ballots are.
In your calculations, you do not mention how many races and issues were involved. That is important in figuring out how much counting would cost and how long it would take at a particular polling station.
There is another point about the cost of hand counting paper ballots. The cost for counting them goes to the people in the community, not some voting company often across the country, or for bribing politicians, as was done by Diebold in Franklin County (Columbus), Ohio. |
Catherine Ansbro
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Catherine_a
Post Number: 1305
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, December 8, 2005 - 4:04 pm: |
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That's a great point about the payments for counting staying within the community. |
Mike LaBonte
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Mike_labonte
Post Number: 7
Registered: 12-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Monday, December 12, 2005 - 10:34 am: |
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In a recent hand count I found that two of us were able to count about 50 per hour on a ballot with 3 races, up to 13 selections per ballot. This was the beginner rate, and it might double by the end of the day. Currently we (Haverhill, MA) pay each worker somewhere around $100 for about 16 hours of work. But we think we are not paying enough, so I would use $8/hr as a basis. I agree that hand counting should be done in teams of three, so my estimate would be (3people x $8/hr) / 100ballots = $0.24 per ballot for counting.
The overall cost of an election is currently a little over $1/ballot in my city, more when the turnout is low. With a typical 50% turnout we have 150 election workers and 17,500 voters. That's a ratio of 117:1, and it doesn't count the 25 police or the 10 or so registrars, clerks, lawyers, etc.
The only way to hand count and be HAVA-compliant would be to have an electronic ballot marker in each precinct, right? |
John Washburn
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Johnwashburn
Post Number: 293
Registered: 04-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Monday, December 12, 2005 - 10:53 am: |
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The only way to hand count and be HAVA-compliant would be to have an electronic ballot marker in each precinct, right?
Or perhaps, Vote-PAD. I understand it has a verification wand so the blind, visually impaired and blind-deaf can detect where a mark on the paper ballot is or is not.
It is an improved version of the Rhode Island tactile ballot with voter verification added on.
Looks promising for paper only jurisdictions. I know there is interest here in Wisconsin among teh 900+ paper only jurisdictions.
For my boyhood home of Phiel, 2-5K for even a single electronic system represents about 3/4 of a year to 2 years of the total property taxes paid by the 90 residents of the 36-square mile township. Even automark alone (as a ballot printer on demand) would be a tough sell in Phiel and most of northern Wisconsin.
But you are correct disablilty access is not necessarily tied to machines tabulating the votes. Only in printing, marking or recording the votes of an elector (on a ballot presumably) is covered by the HAVA disability requirements.
John Washburn
Only bad software is delayed by good testing.
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Mike LaBonte
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Mike_labonte
Post Number: 8
Registered: 12-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Monday, December 12, 2005 - 11:49 am: |
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OK, so while we are discussing the cost of hand counting, should we be doing more comparisons with machines? There was an estimate of $7.50 per ballot for DREs in this thread, although there are no details to that calculation.
I have seen claims that the advantage of DREs is low cost, partly because less poll workers are needed. But we spend a fair amount on annual support services for our optical scan machines. And what is the life of these machines, especially PC-based ones?
Sorry if I am getting off topic. Is there a thread elsewhere where cost comparisons are taking place? |
Jo Anne Karasek
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Jo_anne_karasek
Post Number: 69
Registered: 08-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Monday, December 12, 2005 - 12:47 pm: |
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No, HAVA does not require an electronic ballot marker when the non-disabled voters are using paper ballots.
One disabled compliant system is http://www.vote-pad.us/
Vote-PAD is designed to assist the blind and the physically challenged.
This link gives a discussion of HAVA and the disabled and non-electronic methods of compliance including the tactile/template ballots with a recorder, used effectively in Rhode Island,Sierra Leone, Peru, Canada etc.:
http://www.votersunite.org/info/tactileballots.asp
See illustrations of complying ballots:
http://www.electionaccess.org/Bp/Ballot_Templates.htm |
Jo Anne Karasek
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Jo_anne_karasek
Post Number: 70
Registered: 08-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Monday, December 12, 2005 - 12:55 pm: |
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Mike, I think the relative costs of the voting systems is very much on topic. Although if we had to pay more for the most secure system, I would be for it, but we don't even have to.
Here are excellent links on the costs of DREs and optical scans.
http://www.votersunite.org/info/CostHandout.pdf
http://www.washburnresearch.org/ComparatisonOfTestingCosts_PBOS_to_DRE.htm |
Jason Aaron Osgood
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Zappini
Post Number: 3
Registered: 12-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Monday, December 12, 2005 - 1:01 pm: |
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Hi Mike LaBonte-
The $7.50 estimate was mine. I can't find my original message. And I can't remember my assumptions. And the figure was only for King Co Washington.
So I'll go through the exercise again. Plug in your own values for my estimated values.
King Co is about to spend $5m to buy 650 AccuVote TSx machines, plus all the required back office software and hardware. That's about $7,650 per voting machine. King Co is keeping the paper ballots and optical scanners at each polling station, the new DREs are just for HAVA compliance. One will be placed at each polling station. Our state is also pushing for 100% vote by mail. (Dean Logan told me that 82% of King Co voted absentee during the '05 primary, I don't have more current figures.)
I guessed the new DREs will be used for 2 or 3 years, and then become landfill. We have about 1m voters. So I guessimated 1% of voters are disabled, or about 10,000. So, figure 10,000 votes times 2 votes per year (primary and general) times 2 years = 40,000 votes. $5m divided by 40,000 votes equals $125.00 per vote.
I understand the $5m is buying new software for designing ballots and new scanners and all sorts of stuff. So my estimate isn't exactly fair. However, I understand that if we didn't buy the new DREs, we wouldn't have to upgrade all the other stuff. Something about compatibility. (Which, as a software guy, I can comfortably say is truly pathetic.)
Here's my original writeup, where some of this information comes from:
Report: HAVA Grant Advisory Board Meeting 10/27
http://group.yahoo.com/group/wa-fairelections/message/66
Cheers, Jason
PS- I think my original $7.50 estimate was based on the mistaken belief that the machines would be used by the 18% of people voting at the polling stations. Then it was pointed out that we'd need a quite few more than just 650 DREs. King Co currently has something like 400 polling stations. There's been talk of consolidating. Even so...
---
zappini.blogspot.com
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John Howard
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Harmonyguy
Post Number: 160
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Monday, December 12, 2005 - 6:44 pm: |
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Canadian Federal Elections are staffed by PAID workers rather than volunteer workers. The rate of pay varies by position, and the number of positions per consituency also varies, however on average each of the 308 constituency returning officers hires about 500 people during an election.
HG |
Samuel Scharff
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Abacus
Post Number: 26
Registered: 08-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Monday, December 12, 2005 - 7:54 pm: |
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Here is an on-the-scene participant’s report on hand-counting ballots in King County WA in the election for governor.
Three-person team, each earning $12.80 per hour, counted 5544 votes in a nine-hour shift. Ignoring overhead etc this comes to 3 people x $12.80 x 9 hours = $$345.60 divided by 5544 votes = $0.0623 per vote
Counter for a day finds few bugs in recount process
Seattle Times 12/18/04 Danny Westneat
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002123626_danny18.html
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1304053/posts
Lindsay McClellan is sitting across from me, sifting through a 4-inch stack of ballots, when she says the words that could change the course of state history:
"We've got a smudge."
I've been hired to count votes in the governor's race. We are sitting at a cramped folding table under fluorescent lights, one of 80 three-person teams that are counting, one at a time, King County's 898,574 votes.
All activity at our table stops instantly. The glowering observers from the political parties loom over us like vultures.
For intrigue in this tedious work, nothing tops a "smudge." It's the lingo for those rare ballots on which voters have marked more than one oval in the governor's race.
They are the gray zone, the murky territory of what is believed to be the tightest statewide election in U.S. history.
They are our hanging chad.
McClellan, the Republican-appointed counter, squints at the ballot. The oval for Republican Dino Rossi is filled by a black pen. But there also is a black dot in the oval for the Democrat, Christine Gregoire.
She peers closer. The mark is odd, not quite the same shade as the black pen. Is it a flaw in the paper? A blemish left by the vote-counting machine? What in the world is it?
Suddenly she sits back and laughs.
"It's a squashed bug!"
And so it is. Probably a gnat or no-see-um who died around Nov. 2, dried to the ballot and has been threatening to unhinge the governor's race ever since.
We tally the vote for Rossi, finding that the voter probably squashed the bug in Gregoire's oval not with intent to vote for Gregoire but with intent to kill the bug.
And so it goes in this extraordinary recount, the largest manual examination of election ballots ever attempted.
King County hired me to count votes for one day. I told them upfront who I was and that I would write about the experience.
I was treated like any other employee. I had to join the Teamsters Union, the bargaining unit for King County elections workers (and, for you conspiracy theorists to chew on, a union that supports mostly Democratic candidates). I signed a form allowing the Teamsters to deduct 1.3 percent of my $12.70 hourly wage.
[...]
Last week I was trained in vote-counting procedures for nearly two hours.
Thursday, I arrived at 7:45 a.m. along with nearly 300 others at the county's manual-recount facility, an office building next to Boeing Field.
The vote-counting room had the feel of a makeshift casino. There were no clocks to give a sense of the passage of time. It felt like we were sitting at blackjack tables, only our task was to sort and count ballots from boxes delivered by runners.
We were forbidden to get up without permission, or to reseal the boxes without a county employee present. At all times, we were scrutinized by as many as six grim-faced observers.
With all the recent news about uncounted votes and ballots being found in the side pockets of precinct machines, I expected a slipshod operation.
I was completely wrong. I am now convinced that in the counting of votes, humans are unquestionably superior to machines.
My team of three sorted and counted 5,544 votes during a nine-hour shift. We agreed unanimously; the Republican, the Democrat and I, the county worker ; about who should get every one of those votes.
Each ballot was counted by the Republican appointee: McClellan, 21, a recent University of Washington grad who applied to be the Rossi family nanny and got this job because her brother-in-law works for the campaign.
Then the same stacks were counted by the Democratic appointee: John Reese, 53, a Seattle pro-Palestinian activist who said he was "way left of liberal; I guess I'd call myself a radical."
They kept their counts secret and gave them to me. If the numbers matched, we reported the results and resealed the box. If they differed, we started over. If the second counts still didn't agree, we were instructed to return the box to be given to a new team.
[...]
critics who are blasting the manual recount on the face of it don't know what they're talking about. Such as former Gov. Dan Evans, a Rossi backer who, just as the recount was starting, said this:
"Can you imagine 300 newly hired, ill-trained, overworked people counting by hand with people looking over their shoulders and getting accurate counts? It's ludicrous."
I can do more than imagine it, governor. I saw it with my own eyes.
===
It isn’t ludicrous; it’s for real.
Abacus
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John Washburn
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Johnwashburn
Post Number: 295
Registered: 04-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, December 13, 2005 - 8:25 am: |
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So including the overhead of 6 grim faced observers and a slightly higher hourly rate, the calculation becomes:
9 people x $15.00 x 9 hours = $1,215.00 divided by 5,544 ballots = $0.22 per ballot / per race.
Even with a ballot containing 10 races and assuming the time expended in tallying all 10 races is 10 times the time to tally 1 race, this is $2.20 per ballot.
Even with these forgiving assumptions, this is still cheaper than the $4.00 to $7.50 a ballot I have seen cited elswhere for DRE's and optical scanners.
Even better this is task is partitionable. Doubing the number of people cuts the time to completion by one half.
This is real data.
A ballot takes 53 people-seconds to tally.
9 people x 9 hours x 3,600 seconds/hour = 291,600 people-seconds by 5544 ballots = people-seconds per ballot / per race.
From this realistic cost estimates and realisitic estimates of time to completion can be calculated for other ballots in other jurisdictions. Also a fair comparisons of costs can be done between all systems.
By the way, for this effort:
898,574 Ballots * 53 people-seconds/ballot / 3,600 seconds/hour = 13,230 man-hours of total effort.
How many people are working on this endevour? This is $169,344 total dollars at $12.80/hour for all every person (worker and observer) involved.
(Message edited by johnwashburn on December 13, 2005)
John Washburn
Only bad software is delayed by good testing.
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Jo Anne Karasek
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Jo_anne_karasek
Post Number: 73
Registered: 08-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, December 13, 2005 - 8:56 am: |
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"Counter for a day finds few bugs in recount process "
SEATTLE TIMES
by Danny Westneat
December 18, 2004
". . . .
. . ., one of 80 three-person teams that are counting, one at a time, King County's 898,574 votes.
. . . .
And so it goes in this extraordinary recount, the largest manual examination of election ballots ever attempted.
. . . .
Last week, I was trained in vote counting for nearly two hours.
. . . .
I was completely wrong. I am now convinced that in the counting of votes, humans are unquestionably superior to machines.
. . . .
My team of three sorted and counted 5,544 votes during a nine-hour shift. We agreed unanimously — the Republican, the Democrat and I, the county worker — about who should get every one of those votes.
. . . .
They kept their counts secret and gave them to me. If the numbers matched, we reported the results and resealed the box. If they differed, we started over. If the second counts still didn't agree, we were instructed to return the box to be given to a new team.
The system of checks and double-checks didn't stop there. If our tallies for a precinct varied by even one vote from the machine recount, another team would later reopen the box and count the entire precinct by hand again.
I'm so impressed with this system, McClellan said. "It's near impossible to corrupt, and it seems much more sensitive than a machine count. All the criticisms I hear about what we're doing are wrong.
. . . .
"I would put people counting over machine counting any time."
. . . .
. . . . teams like mine in 38 of the state's 39 counties had added 1,130 votes to the two governor candidates' totals, almost always by counting votes that were obvious to the human eye but which the machines had passed over.
. . . .
In a race separated by a few dozen votes out of 2.9 million, these are the kinds of judgments that could dictate who is governor. It's comforting to me that they are being made by human beings.
. . . .
But political strife almost is nonexistent on the recount teams. Even when it rears up, it doesn't affect the final tally. Two counters were dismissed earlier in the week when they got into a shouting match, and their work was redone by others.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/PrintStory.pl?document_id=2002123626&zs ection_id=2002107549&slug=danny18&date=20041218
[Note: 240 counters x 9 hours x $12.70/hour = $27,432 for 898,754 ballots or $.03 a ballot (one race).
240 counters x 9 hours =2,160 man hours or 129,600 minutes for 898,754 ballots or 6.9 ballots a minute--averaged 7 one-race ballots a minute.] |
Vernon Reisenleiter
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Vern_reisenleiter
Post Number: 17
Registered: 12-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, January 18, 2006 - 4:05 pm: |
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This briefing paper from electiononline.org relates the experience of Clark County, NV in auditing VVPB tapes. Specifically it took about four minutes for a four person team to review each ballot on the tape. (A team consisted of a reader, a verifier and two data recorders) Note that the paper said that VVBPs are designed for voter verification, not ballot counting. It did not indicate if auditors were reviewing all of the races and ballot initiatives?
Vern Reisenleiter
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Vernon Reisenleiter
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Vern_reisenleiter
Post Number: 20
Registered: 12-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, January 25, 2006 - 2:53 pm: |
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Concerning my post on Wednesday, January 18, 2006 - 04:05 pm.
I contacted the Clark County, NV Registrar about the four minutes per ballot figure that I quoted earlier. In an unexpectedly quick response,he provided some valuable insight into the process. The bottom line is that it took a team (of four people) about two minutes, not four, to audit a ballot. Unfortunately, he didn't indicate, how many races/issues were on each ballot.
Clark County, NV has a population of 1,375,765 (2002), has 41 cities including Las Vegas, and includes parts of Nevada's three (US) Congressional districts. That will have to serve for now as a proxy for the number of races/issues on the ballot.
Here is the text of the email.
We were required to audit (a randomly selected) 1% of the machines used in the election by comparing the electronically recorded results of each machine with the machines' VVPAT paper record. That meant we needed to manually tally all of the races/questions of every ballot cast on the machine as recorded on the VVPAT paper record and then compare our manual tally with the electronically recorded results.
We used teams of four people to audit a tape. One person read the tape. Two people independently tallied what was read. The forth person observed. The average tape had 63 ballots. We found a team could get through two tapes in an eight hour work day...basically one in the morning and one in the afternoon. This included some break-time. One of the reasons it took so long was that about ½ the time, when the team finished a tape, they found the results did not match in one or two of the races/questions, and then they had to go back and re-audit those races. In all cases, it was the "human" audit team that had made the mistake and the electronic results were accurate (after all, isn't that why we spent money on the computers in the first place).
Also adding to the time was the fact that handling the tapes is very awkward. When they are unrolled, these tapes are very long (a fully used tape is longer than a football field). The reader had to deal with an ever growing (and eventually) enormous pile of paper on the floor as the tape was read and unrolled (we eventually provided them large containers to contain the tape. Simply re-rolling the tape after it had been read took 15 minutes or more...and if they had made a mistake, then they had to go through it again.
In summary, what I really said was that a team of four people could audit approximately two tapes a day. That statement was taken by several people in several different election-related forums and turned into the statement that it took a team about four minutes to audit one ballot (they had simply divided the ballots into the minutes of an 8 hour day).
We have since developed the technology to read the bar code printed with the ballot on the VVPAT paper record and (assuming the Secretary of State signs off) we will use an entirely different and much more efficient methodology in the future.
His statement about having to re-look at one out of every two tapes is roughly consistent with the tabulation/re-tabulation error rate for paper ballots reported in Using Recounts to Measure the Accuracy of Vote Tabulations: Evidence from New Hampshire Elections 1946-20021. (CALTECH/MIT VOTING TECHNOLOGY PROJECT--VTP Working Paper #11, January 2004)
Um, I have some issues about relying on reading bar codes to audit votes tabulated by electronic voting systems, but that would be off topic for this thread.
Vern Reisenleiter
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Mike LaBonte
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Mike_labonte
Post Number: 25
Registered: 12-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Monday, April 3, 2006 - 8:27 am: |
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Although this thread has been silent for a while, I have poked around now and then to find better info on hand count costs. After reading all that has been written here I have not found a comprehensive external study that calculates voting method costs including hand count. Neither am I convinced that all of the costs of hand counting have been accounted for in this thread.
A significant cost in my mind is the effort to hire, train, and manage the army of people needed to run a hand counted election in a city with more than 20,000 voters. Looking to Canada for guidance, I see that the larger cities there have been considering voting machines. This 1999 memo from the Toronto City Clerk states that hand count cost is higher, although no supporting evidence is given. One point is that they end up with more voting places and more workers to make the hand count managable.
Granted, I look at this from the Massachusetts point of view, where elections are run by municipalities, not counties. To change how elections are run it is necessary to convince each City/Town Clerk, one at a time. And these are people who have LOTS of other things to do, so the incentive for them is to offload work to machines and private companies. They are not full-time election officials.
One thing that has been established to my satisfaction is that the accuracy of hand counting is very close to that of optical scan. Residual vote analyses are not perfect, but they are all we have. They indicate that total errors for paper ballots remain constant no matter how they are counted, as compared to VERY thorough hand counting. |
Catherine Ansbro
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Catherine_a
Post Number: 2023
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Monday, April 3, 2006 - 1:40 pm: |
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http://www.bbvforums.org/cgi-bin/forums/show.cgi?tpc=17141&post=17431#POST17431
Mike,
Have a look at the thread linked above. The spreadsheet may be of interest to you, as well as the subsequent discussion. Marian Beddill would probably be glad to discuss this further.
Also, Pat Vesely's book is due out shortly I believe. I am hoping that it was address some of these questions. (Any update, Pat?)
When doing cost comparisons it is equally important to include all the ancillary costs generated by electronic equipment, as well--which are turning out to be considerably higher than most places have realized. |
Michelle Gabriel
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Michelle
Post Number: 4
Registered: 05-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Monday, April 3, 2006 - 2:26 pm: |
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Hello All. I have just skimmed all of these and I need to read in detail. What I don't see ( forgive me if I missed it) is that you need to look at...
1. How many races are being counted
2. How is the ballot set up so that you could count races in parallel rather than in series.
3. How many people are required by the state laws to be there to do the hand count ( in CA it is 4 althougth in my county they only use 3).
4. Does ballot design effect the speed of handcounting?
5. What are the wages being paid to the people hand counting?
Many of these are so variable ....
Thanks,
Michelle |
Michelle Gabriel
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Michelle
Post Number: 5
Registered: 05-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Monday, April 3, 2006 - 2:37 pm: |
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I forgot a few more issues to look at...
I am not in favor of electronic voting but still you need to look at these...
1. How many times will you use the e-voting machines? If you are going to use them 10 x then you should multiply your hand counts by 10. Hand count is single use, machines are multiple use.
2. The RoV's have to certify the canvas in a certain number of days. If you have many races, you have to do it in parallel. If you do it in parallel, you need to have the space to count these in.
This assumes you are NOT counting at the precinct.
If your county has a way to sort the absentee votes by precinct, you are probably going to go back and count in a central place.
--mg |
Catherine Ansbro
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Catherine_a
Post Number: 2025
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Monday, April 3, 2006 - 2:39 pm: |
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Michelle,
Some of those issues are mentioned in the 2 threads. (How many races, how many people required, wages paid--or not--to the people hand counting.)
In the Think Tank Forum from last September there were additional discussions (e.g. I remember learning for the first time about Swiss ballots, which have a notch in a certain place along 1 side to indicate which race a ballot is for. When they're stacked it makes it virtually impossible to have ballots for different races mixed up.) Others have made passed on other ways (different colored paper for different ballots for different kinds of races; perforated paper to make it easier to count races simultaneously).
Yes they are variable. See my post just above yours for a link to a spreadsheet to allow you to calculate in light of your area's variables.
Another important variable is, how quickly are results required?
In any case, you can do the calculations yourself based on a "worst-case scenario" for your particular set of variables. Then compare to a comparable scenario using optical scanners, or useing DREs with or without paper, etc.
In all cases you have to also calculate year-round costs (storage, updates, consultancy, legal, etc.). |
Catherine Ansbro
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Catherine_a
Post Number: 2026
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Monday, April 3, 2006 - 2:46 pm: |
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Wouldn't it be nice if one knew how many times the elctronic voting machines would be used! In some cases, the answer is zero. And counties have been shocked to discover the high cost of ongoing consultancy and upgrades inbetween elections. Not to mention charging their customers for correcting their own mistakes. Then there is any added cost of recounts (when possible), including legal costs--it's hard to know how to calculate an average for this, however.
Ironically, the speed of producing results is often much longer with electronic machines, because of all the problems.
And then there's the little thing about accuracy. How does one put a value on that?
You're right that all costs must be carefully considered, and it's not an easy thing. |
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