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Some people are trying to force all ballots to be counted by hand. People who are asking to get rid of machines obviously haven’t worked in an election. When you are still hand counting ballots after 2 a.m. after working all day, that is when mistakes can happen. Then that batch of ballots has to be counted again so that you can find the mistake. It takes so many people hand counting, even for a small town, especially in a big election, when you may have federal, state, and local candidates and issues. Just having four or five candidates on the ballot, such as in some presidential races, makes it more complicated.
Just taking all of the ballots out of the ballot boxes and preparing them for counting by putting them in batches of 50 can take quite a while. Even with machines there are several steps but getting out within an hour or so after the polls close is better than many hours later.
Let those people who have those views count ballots even for a small election with people waiting and watching for results, and see if their views change.
Patricia Clark
Unity