Frequently Asked Questions

How many people do we need to hand count the ballots?

Estimates are, 1% of the voting population, although if we end up with more people than we needed (voting totals may have been inflated over the past several cycles), then we can all go home sooner on Election Night! Estimates are that a hand count team of 10 in a precinct can handle about 600 ballots from 7PM to midnight on Election Night.

 

What is the cost? 

Costs would be for the place, office supplies, and printing. Hand count volunteers should not expect to be paid, but it's possible they would be paid for five hours of work (if 10 people are each paid $20/hour to count and add for 5 hours, that would be $1000 in labor costs.) Estimates are that under the current system of universal mail-in ballots, each ballot costs about $10 each. In Arapahoe County that is about $4 million, so by getting rid of mail-in ballots, the county could spend $10,000 per precinct and still come out ahead. And, while it is hard to get anyone to say how much Arapahoe County spends on election machines, this agreement shows Georgia spending almost $90 million on Dominion systems. Election machines would be irrelevant after the ballots are hand counted, so that money won't be needed.

 

Will we be working with the county? 

If county commissioners and election officials realize that the current system, in violating a variety of laws, exposes them to a lot of criminal liability...yes.

 

Is it legal? 

According to current Colorado law, as passed by people elected under a demonstrably illegitimate system, and under the rules of the Secretary of State whose office leaked BIOS passwords on the Internet during the 2024 election, no. However, a few years ago hand counting was Colorado's legal standard, which a candidate could demand for a recount. The better question is, does a functional or a dysfunctional election system comply better with the Constitutional requirement that Colorado citizens should be self-governing?

 

What about military/overseas/disabled?

When we return to polling stations in the local precinct, voting will be more accessible than it is now. Arapahoe County has over 400 precincts but fewer than 40 ballot drop boxes. Requiring disabled people to return their ballots by mail is an insult; mail is very insecure and ballots are distinctively marked. Nobody would put a hundred-dollar bill in an envelope and mark it "CASH INSIDE!" If you divide the GDP by the number of voters whose votes control the GDP, each ballot is worth at least tens of thousands of dollars. For those who are too physically disabled to leave their homes, but not cognitively disabled, a bipartisan team could, on request, make a house call on Election Day.

For those such as deployed military who actually need them, we can return to absentee ballots. Absentee ballots are very different from universal mail-in ballots; you request one ahead of time, have your signature notarized (which military officers have authority to do), and return it by Election Day. 

 

How do we make sure everything is bipartisan?

First of all, there are more than two parties. It is good to have hand count teams as multipartisan as possible, because nothing focuses your attention like the knowledge that the crazy person from the other party is counting ballots across from you. However, it is ultimately up to individuals whether they volunteer or not. All potential volunteers should assume their crazy neighbor signed up to volunteer last week, and act accordingly!

 

Do any other civilized countries use hand counting?

How about Taiwan? "In Taiwan, ballots exist only on paper. Each one is read aloud and counted in front of public observers at the government polling station where it is cast. For Taiwan’s population of 23 million, there are 17,795 polling stations on an island slightly larger than Maryland or Switzerland. Since there is no absentee or early voting, Taiwanese voters must return to their registered precinct to cast their ballots, causing hundreds of thousands to flood the public rail system on election day and thousands to fly back to Taiwan from overseas." More about Taiwan elections from their Central Election Commission.

 

If there is so much fraud in elections, is there any point in voting? 

Yes! Even under our current system, the more real people who vote in person, on paper, on Election Day, the harder it is to hide the fraud. Or in the words of an election integrity activist from Georgia,  "ALWAYS VOTE. IT TAKES OFFENSE AND DEFENSE TO WIN ELECTIONS. ALWAYS REPORT EVIDENCE OF MANIPULATION. ALWAYS DEFEND THE INTEGRITY OF OUR ELECTIONS. DON'T BE WEAK AND SILENT. MAINTAIN SOVEREIGN CONTROL OF OUR ELECTIONS AND BORDERS. THIS IS WHAT WE FOUGHT FOR."

 

What about shuffling results in small precincts to preserve the secrecy of the ballot?

First of all, that's an odd question in a state which completely trashed private votes by promoting mail-in ballots, which include zero guarantee that the voter will be able to vote in secret. But courts have already looked at what happens when voter privacy conflicts with electio transparency. Here is a good explanation out of Texas: "It boils down to this: (1) All election data needed for a complete forensic audit must be public and transparent, (2) but other than that, the county should protect voter privacy and ballot secrecy to the greatest extent possible, (3) except when the voter voluntarily divulges their vote. In summary, auditability of elections trumps ballot secrecy."

 

Our ballots are very long - can we really count all those choices?

Yes we could, and probably a lot faster than you'd think. But it's better to keep ballots short, for many reasons. "Consolidated elections produce extraordinarily long ballots that overwhelm voters, triggering severe fatigue. Many who show up enthusiastically for top-of-ticket races grow exhausted and skip or leave blank the down-ballot local contests, effectively disenfranchising themselves in the decisions closest to their everyday lives." Read more about the problem, and what to do about it, in this thoughtful article. 

 

Counting Demo Videos (using various hand count methods)

 

Nebraska

Pennsylvania, Beaver County

Pennsylvania, Dauphin County

Texas, Dallas County

Texas, Kerr County

Wisconsin, Dodge County