Hunting And Election After Action Report: Part 5.5: Judging Details

Part of why I volunteered to be an election judge was to see for myself “how the sausage is made”. It is better to know than either assume or merely bitch.

I could sit down and write reams about what I did and did not see but I’m not feeling it. However, I did want to mention one thing. It relates to this:

“A nonprofit group alleges that in two precincts in Virginia, election machines reported counting more votes than actual ballots, an irregularity that could have decided two key congressional races.”

Every state is different (in fact elections are one of the rare times when States act like States and less like vassals of DC). But there are some commonalities. Let’s see if I can flesh out a few details:

Generally speaking and painting with a broad brush, one part of the election system determines if a ballot is to be issued, a second part issues the ballot, and a third records it. This is a good idea and I like it.

The first step is where a sane State (or really any sane organization trying to do any business transaction) would use ID. The ID should be matched to a good solid registered voter database. (Yeah, I know. Just bear with me as I discuss how it works in theory without getting into the weeds of Chicago’s dead voters.)

Suppose Bill Johnes registered to vote at 1 Maple Lane in Rationaltown, USA. It’s a good sign if a dude shows up at the polling place in Rationaltown, USA with ID that says Bill Johnes.

In theory, one of the election judges addresses Bill Johnes and asks “where do you live Bill?” Bill says “1 Maple Lane”. Notice the judge doesn’t say “do you still live at 1 Maple Lane?” It’s up to Bill to provide the information and not just agree to whatever the judge says. Plus of course, only a raging asshole would assume great swaths of our population are too stupid and lazy to obtain ID… but that’s a topic for another day.

So now Bill has established who he is and where he’s from and the ID matches the voter registration. This happens pretty much instantaneously with almost all of what I’ll call “normal, average, non-weirdo, sentient, voters”. (The spaz that doesn’t know their own name, or the planet where we live, or if they have pants on… is a different story. These losers add a lot to the workload but they’re not a big part of society overall. They’re just a fraction of the in-person on-the-day voters… or for that matter humans on earth.)

So the judge thinks “yeah, this is pretty solid” and agrees that a ballot should be issued to Bill. They also check Bill off the voter roll for that election. This keeps Bill from voting a second time. Bill! What were you thinking! It also keeps some other jackass from pretending to be Bill and using Bill’s name to make a fraudulent vote. If Bill’s purple haired freazoid sister in law tries to pretend she’s Bill, the poll judge will say “Bill has already voted, would you like to discuss it with my supervisor?” at which point the bitch will run into a wall of rules and regulations meant to stop her from misusing Bill’s legitimate vote. (You can see now how every single bullshit entry in a voter register is a dangerous thing. Every unused record is a place were a fraudulent vote can be parked!)

At least in my limited experience, that person doesn’t issue the ballot. In America we try hard to have voter privacy and also (at least in theory and in “the old days”) it’s a check on cheating (or mistakes!) to have two separate people isolating tasks. One for checking voters and the other for handling the ballots.

So Bill is handed off to the next step in the process. Someone who has not the slightest idea (or care) who Bill is, hands Bill a ballot. The judge at the next step does this because the first part of the process cleared him.

Assuming a State has paper ballots, that is to say it’s a sane State, Bill goes into a little booth to mark his choices. Then Bill goes to the next step. This is the third independent part of the process. The judge that issued the ballot has no clue who Bill is, only that he’s allowed to vote. The judge that checked Bill against voter rolls doesn’t get to play with ballots at all. Neither of them sees the ballot after Bill has thoughtfully (we hope) made his choices and approaches the nearest machine (or as I like to say “controversy generator”).

Bill, in total anonymity, stuffs his ballot into a scanner. The guy manning the scanner just makes sure the scanner received it properly. He doesn’t know about or mock or hassle Bill about his choices. Plus he hands out dumb little stickers.

In theory, the scanner reads the paper ballot, interprets the scan, and (one would hope) properly records the results. In theory, the scanner isn’t in communication with anyone. It’s supposedly not sending messages to the State capital, Russian bots, Bill Gates, or Space Aliens. It’s also keeping a paper tape recording of everything that happens. It also keeps every damn ballot in a locked box!

It’s supposed to be a dumb fuckin’ machine that does nothing but count. It should never ever have odd communication capacities or the ability to count in non-integers. (I’ll leave further discussion about that for a later time.)

Then Bill gets a sticker and goes home to work on his turnip farm. Well done Bill. I hope you didn’t vote for a dumbass, but if you did, we’ll count it just like we’re supposed to.

Here’s the important part; there are three things that can be counted and they are completely separate. One person (or group) counts how many people were matched up to the voter registration and thus were cleared for a ballot. Another person (or group) counts how many ballots were handed over to voters. A whole different person (or group) and the infamous “machine” count how many ballots were received. In my case, all the ballots in the locked box in the machine were hand counted too. I consider that to be part of the third data stream

Each of the three counts MUST match.

Multiple counts that crosscheck each other. This is one of the simplest and most rudimentary concepts in collecting data. It’s the sort of thing every statistics student learns as freshmen (are there still statistics students in colleges?). Every single accountant in creation (in any culture and from any nation) would also recognize the idea of crosschecks too. It’s not rocket science and it’s not a new idea. I’m pretty sure you could unearth a wheat merchant from a shipping dock in Spain from the year 1653 and they’d understand it too.

Also, it’s “put up or shut up” time. When I volunteered, I was told “nobody leaves until the count matches up”. If we differed by even one ballot. Even one! Everyone stayed right in that room and counted and re-counted until the issue was handled.

I was told that a mis-count was a huge PITA and everyone would be pissed off if it happens. Apparently it sometimes occurs and it would burn a lot of time on the end of a taxing 15 hour day. But the training was clear… tough shit! Nobody leaves until it’s figured out. You’re not done until you’re done. No excuses, no bullshit.

In my case, it went as smooth as butter. We wrapped it up in half an hour. Everything matched: number of people approved to have a ballot, number of ballots issued, and number of ballots counted (AND we hand counted the physical ballots in the machine’s lock box too). Not “sorta’ matched” but “every damn one accounted for”.

Half. An. Hour. Close doesn’t count. Must. Get. It. Right!

“In P-612 in the 7th district, 531 ballots were reported as having been scanned by the machines, even though workers counted just 504 ballots. In P-104, there were at least 10 more ballots counted by the machines than counted by hand.”

In that example, P-612 in the 7th district counted 105.3% of the issued ballots. This is utterly and completely impossible. Someone fucked up. It must be fixed. Until it is, the count is complete bullshit.

In this particular example, I’m not taking a position on “cheat” versus “fuck up”. Nor do I want to beat up people in Virginia who either cheated or fucked up. I don’t even care whether it’s a cheat or a fuck up. All I know is they had one job and they failed and it should be rectified.

There are times when your numbers have to match. This is a serious business (even in our declining corrupt society we still pretend votes are accurate) and it has to be that way or “the will of the people” doesn’t reside with our representatives. (Which, you’ll note is a thing that can fade with abuse!)

Regardless of whether Turd Sandwich or Giant Douche wins, the numbers MUST match up. In this article they didn’t. It’s not open for interpretation and it’s not a subtle issue. Something went terribly wrong. It should be made right.

I don’t care whether it’s incompetence, malfeasance, or a combination of the two. Fucked over by accident and fucked over by a cheat have virtually the same effect on our society. My concern is that a society that can’t count three data streams to get a perfect match is already halfway down the drain. I don’t want to live under a totalitarian madman or in a mud hut… yet here we are. As I said before, this ain’t rocket science and it’s not a new idea.

Also, I was there. I saw it done. It can be done. I did it.

Nobody leaves until it’s done perfectly. It’s not as hard as it sounds. It matters!

Update: Here’s an article from New Hampshire that covers a similar error. In this case, they got to the root of the matter, though perhaps slowly. I salute the New Hampshire Secretary of State for getting to the right destination… eventually.

In this case, the players performed honorably and fixed the mistake instead of circling the wagons and/or putting up a wall of obfuscation. Well done! That should be the baseline default behavior everywhere. There were no excuses, the error was not due to malice, which made it dirt simple to catch.

The point is there’s a time and place to be accurate. Particularly in a nation that has multiple hazy, drawn out, potentially biased elections in series, clean elections are deadly serious. America is jittery like a chihuahua on meth. We don’t need and cannot indefinitely endure rule by people who have not secured “consent of the governed”.

To restore order, election shenanigans have to be minimized, handled transparently, and corrected rather than hidden. Even in this dirt simple situation, the 11/8 mistake remained uncorrected until 11/14!

Based on what we saw in 2020, and what we’re seeing from 2022, and the howls of indignation in 2016, and the hanging chads of Brower County in 2000, the system is only good if it’s kept on a tight leash. In general, when there’s an error (particularly one that might have a malice in the mix and therefore covered tracks like carefully mixed ballots, disposal of things that ought be retained, or complete absence of chain of custody). The courts want nothing to do with it. They stampede to call it “moot” and I can see their reticence. Governments do what governments do. They’ll simply deny any errors until corruption is so rampant that even little old ladies on Facebook lose faith. Then the whole house of cards collapses.

It does nobody good to shout “it’s a conspiracy theory” while deplatforming complainers. It does everyone good to audit the living shit out of every precinct until they become as squeaky clean as the bore-fest I witnessed.