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Monday, Jan. 13, 2025

Is hand-counting votes more accurate than machine counting? 


no

Studies show that manually counting votes is more prone to errors than counting by machine.

In 2022, Nevada’s Nye County attempted to hand-count their ballots and saw error rates as high as 25%. Hand-counting is also slower and can increase election costs. California’s Shasta County estimated the cost of manually counting 110,000 ballots was $1.65 million. Places in the U.S. that count ballots by hand tend to have 1,000 or fewer registered voters. 

Voting machines regularly go through “logic and accuracy” tests to make sure they tabulate ballots correctly, and can be further audited by comparing their results against hand-counted vote tallies. 

In Colorado, bipartisan groups of county officials test voting equipment and audit elections to ensure accuracy. Both processes are observable by the public as an additional layer of verification.

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