C. Too stupid to know there is a problem

haha thanks tom...i tend to be pessimistic...but i give people the benifit of doubt....maybe i'm giving too much?

I would think, or I do believe you can ask for a new ballot, not sure though. I know that we vote by mail up here and we just make sure that we mark the right circle. It would take some work to get a new ballot. That is a good question.

If you can't follow instructions that simple maybe you should be in the voting pool. I would also assume a person would have a pretty good idea of who they are voting for before they picked up the pen and paper.

I am an election judge in northern St. Louis County (Kabetogama Township).

You may certainly request a new ballot.

FYI - We have 144 registered voters. We had over 85% turn-out.

3 teams of 2 people each hand-counted 39 ballots per team. Then we switched groups of ballots and each team counted someone else's, checking for errors. We worked from 8pm to 11pm.

We had no voting errors in 117 ballots (95 walk-ins, 22 absentees). No one requested a new ballot...but they could have.

Just my 2 cents

LET IT SNOW

The easiest scenario that I can imagine is that someone who has/had access to the ballots could quickly double mark votes going to the undesired candidate to drop those votes from the tallies. I think our voting system stinks, I think we should go to one of the open source voting software solutions that are verifiable.

Let it Snow do you know if all polling places in Minnesota use optical scanners? If so do they reject ballots that are unreadable or marked incorrectly for example if someone voted for Franken and Coleman? I would think the scanners would reject incorrect ballots. I mean if they can create a pop machine that can tell if my dollar had a bent corner why not if someone voted incorrectly.

BTW when I say voted incorrectly I mean circled the name or put an x in the box, voted for 2 candidates in the same race...not who they voted for.

Thanks for your post Let it Snow.

With optical scanners, I wager multiple positives create issues.

That's what I was thinking Sean. That and some people are just not high enough in the gean pool to color in a circle and those votes should be tossed.

I would like to think that the people handling the ballots are more honest than that, but human nature being what it is when it comes to politics, I sure would rule something like that out.

I honestly did not know that we could ask for a new ballot. For this reason I try to take my time and be sure where I place my marks.

upnorth, to suggest that everyone knows precisely who they will vote for when they enter that booth seems a little excessive. I know this year I tried to be well informed. I even used the internet to search for open positions so that I wouldn't feel blind-sided.

In the end, I was totally uniformed when it came to open judicial seats. There must have been 15 positions to fill with about 3/4 running un-opposed. It is true that the senatorial position was a much more in the spotlight race, the fact remains that there are a lot of elected positions that we rarely hear about until Election Day.

It can be very over-whelming to truly become informed.

Bob

I fully understand the need for a recount in an election this close. A simple error in tallying or reporting by an election judge in a precinct should not cost a candidate the election.

What I do not understand is why we willingly allow subjective bias into the process by attempting to determine voter intent. Everyone eligable has the right to vote and have their vote counted, but with that right comes individual responsibility to exercise that right. The most basic step being showing up at the polls on election day. It is not the governments responsibility to track you down and determine who you would like to vote for.
So the two things the voter is responsible for is showing up to vote, and clearly communicating their vote.

The government responsibility is providing access (polling places within rasonable distance), adequate voting hours so all can vote (stay open late for voters in line) turn no elgible voter away, and a relatively simple ballot (voters are not expected to remember the name of a candidate and write it in with proper spelling, simply pick one from a list). Then count all votes in an objective nonbias process.

It is rediculas to assume it is the governments resposibility to determine individual voters intent, since that connot be done fairly and ojectively.

For example, voter 1 intends to vote for John Doe but mistakenly fills in the oval for Jack Sprat, his vote gets counted by machine for Jack Sprat, regardless of his intent. Voter 2 intends to vote for Jack Sprat but fills in the oval for John Doe, then catches his error and fills in the other oval with various scratches and notations. The machine kicks it out as an unreadable ballot.

On a hand recount subjective observers may determine that voter 2 INTENDED to vote for Jack Sprat thus giving him one additional vote he did not previously recieve. However, no observer can accurately determine the intent of voter 1 so not only does Doe not get a vote he deserves, Sprat gets one extra that the voter never intended.

A truely unbiased recount cannot be done by subjective analysis of possible intent. Recounts should be done, but done by machine (optical scanners)to simply recheck the tally of legible votes. No voting errors are rectified by this process but statistically those errors have no bias to either candidate thus are irrelevent in the total vote count. "Correcting" some votes based on probable intent without the ability to correct all votes for intent adds an unnecessary opportunity for subjective bias that is simply eliminated with mechanical counting devices.

If we truely want to count intent rather than votes we would need signed ballots so every vote could be checked with the original voter. Of course that is not practical so why do we allow a subjective partial count of voter intent?

Bob, Truth is I wasn't that well informed on judicial seats either, but if I didn't have preferred candidate I didn't vote for anyone. I have way too many other things going on in my life to study everything about politics and who is running at every single level. But if I feel I have no knowledge, I also have no opinion and won't vote just blindly. There is nothing saying the whole ballot needs tob e filled out. Voting just for the sake of voting is not the best plan, at least in my opinion.

My opinion exactly. Thanks for putting it into words.

Hey Black Bay,

All do not use optical scanners - here on Kab we use our eyes! It's a tedious process but it makes us all feel like we are really doing something important and we feel very responsible to do this correctly. As we know, every vote counts.

Our ballots and results are sent to Duluth. They will be doing the recount there for all of St. Louis County. Not sure if that's a hand count or by scanner.

LET IT SNOW