We had 2 teams of 4 work on hand counts of hand marked ballots. Two callers sit on one side of the table and two talliers across from them. The ballots were from actual 2022 midterm races from ES&S machines (Printed absentee and Expressvote ADA compliant ballots). Each team counted in 50 ballot increments one race at a time.
Here are some observations:
Times ranged from 1:25 to just over 2 minutes. There is a tradeoff between productivity and accuracy and there seemed to be a nice cadence/pace at around 1:45-2 minutes. If you go faster, it may lead to fatigue or inaccuracies. If too fast, it can create anxiety.
The first time a write-in is called out it causes some confusion so a pause would be helpful or slowing down. The same would apply to “Under” and “Over” votes.
It was suggested to put the name of the candidate on the top and bottom of the sheet so the tallier can easily see it as they progress down the sheet.
Both teams thought that using a second color for the recount was better and so it was suggested to start say with blue and recount in red. Then when you get to the next 50 ballots you can switch to red and recount blue. Overall, they didn’t prefer blue or black and wondered if they could do say purple and green as colors that would pop more.
If caller hands ballot to other person, it may slow the process down but also check to see if there are 2 ballots.
We found it most convenient to write the candidate that was most likely to get more votes to be placed in the far left column. Less errors were produced when the majority of the tallies were placed in far-left column.
We only used letter sized paper for the tally sheets so legal size may help for readability
May want to swap “Over and Under” on the sheet as under is used more
With one tally sheet the 1-inch binder is not as necessary
Some of the callers preferred plastic surgical gloves, others the rubber fingertips and some the sticky tack to facilitate turning the ballots.
It is definitely beneficial to agree up front on how to shorten the names to call them out.
When talliers, the counter, the observer and the videographer are ready, start the process. One of the callers should state the date, location (precinct), race/office/issue
that is being counted and the candidate names. If you are shortening the candidate’s
name to save time in the call out for example, using the first name state what
name or shortcut you are using so that everyone is aware up front.
Race times
| Race | # candidates | Time |
| Gov/Lt gov | 3 | 1:26 |
| AG | 2 | 1:43 |
| SOS | 4 | 1:46 |
| SOS (recount) | 4 | 1:41 |
| State Treasurer | 3 | 2:21 |
| SOS | 4 | 1:25 filled in next 50-100 same tally sheet |
Times for the team 2 were 1:40, 1:45, 1:49 &1:52.
Attached is the tally sheet we used.
Note that if we can call each race and reconcile in 2 minutes for 50 ballots. A hundred ballots would be 4 minutes and 1000 ballots (assuming maximum approximate turnout of 70% would result in would be 40 minutes. Assuming 10 races an election this would be a total time of around 400 minutes. This would take 6.67 hours but we rounded it up to 7 and 1/2 for breaks, etc. If you split that between 2 teams of 4 people that would be 3.75 hours to hand count a race. Worse case scenario would be 4 hours tops. All of it would be completed and you would just need to total the batches and send to the county.
We recommend that these counts be videotaped so that there is full transparency and verifiability and that all ballots are reconciled at the end.
Watch here: