On May 31st, over 100 grassroots activists and election experts gathered in Dallas, Texas, to demonstrate several hand-count methods for ballots. We collaborated with multiple state leaders and educated many interested parties on the Gold Standard for elections, which is our recommended approach for re-engineering the four phases of our election ecosystem from registration to reporting. All attendees had a lot of fun. Here is a short highlight reel of the event.
We were able to demonstrate our favored method, which we have fine-tuned over the last two years. This method is simple, easy, and straightforward to train. Our recommendation is for a second poll worker crew to come in after the polls close to count. These workers can be identified and trained by the parties and election officials, but should be recruited from the general public. Another option is to create a system similar to the jury selection system. In recent trainings conducted with young and old citizens, we had minimal, if any, errors after a quick 15-minute training.
The method is very secure and can be double-checked and verified by scanning the batch of ballots before the count, and or recording with a phone or iPad. To count by midnight, we recommend that precincts be kept to a maximum of 1500. The biggest general elections would result in approximately 1,000 ballots based on turnout. This would require 3-4 teams of 4 to count per precinct, and they could easily finish in no more than 4 hours.
Here is a quick video of our Gold Standard Tally method:
For more information about the Gold Standard Method and our proposed executive order for elections that was sent to the Trump administration, go to these links:
Gold Standard Elections