Can a state count all its votes by hand? A North Dakota proposal aims to be the first to try

BISMARCK, N.D. — All election ballots would be counted by hand under a proposal that could go to voters in North Dakota, potentially achieving a goal of activists across the country who distrust modern vote counting but discouraging election officials who say that the change would unnecessarily delay voting and lead to more votes. errors.

Supporters of the proposed ballot measure are far from being able to collect enough signatures, but if the plan makes it onto the June 2024 ballot and voters approve it, North Dakota would have to replace the ballot scanners with hundreds of workers across the state who scan the ballots would count and recount carefully.

It's a change that other Republican-led states have tried without success in the years since former President Donald Trump began criticizing the nation's vote-counting system, falsely claiming it was against him rigged.

“We always counted by hand before we got these machines,” said Lydia Gessele, a farmer who is leading the effort to get the measure on the ballot. “They can find the people to do the work because there are people who are willing to come in and count hands.”

Gessele said the supporters were motivated by problems they said occurred in 2022, including inaccurate voting scanners and a power outage that prevented people in Bismarck from voting.

Former Secretary of State Al Jaeger, a Republican who oversaw North Dakota elections for 30 years through 2022, rejected Gessele's claims, saying: “Nothing happened that would have changed the outcome of a vote. Nothing.”

The efforts in North Dakota join a movement among Trump allies who have railed against voting machines since 2020. Without proof, they label the machines as suspicious and fraudulent. In some cases, they have even hacked voting systems software in their efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

Earlier this year, Fox News reached a settlement with Dominion Voting Systems to pay $787.5 million to settle a defamation lawsuit stemming from the network's broadcast statements that Dominion machines were rigged against Trump.

The North Dakota ballot measure proposes that all votes “must be made via paper ballots and counted by hand, beginning on Election Day and continuing uninterrupted until hand counting is completed.”

The move would make North Dakota the first state to require hand counts, instead of the paper ballots and scanners used for most elections, according to Voting Rights Lab, a nonpartisan organization that tracks states' voting laws.

The measure does not specify a process or funding for hand counts. The state pays for election equipment, but North Dakota's 53 counties are each responsible for polling places and voting locations.

North Dakota Republican Secretary of State Michael Howe said he opposes the proposed measure because hand counts are less standardized than the use of scanners. He compared it to having a computer instead of a human umpire at a baseball game.

“When you count by hand, you introduce the human element of refereeing. You could have a wide strike zone, you could have a narrow strike zone,” Howe said. “What you get with a machine is one consistent strike zone every time.”

Officials elsewhere in the country are struggling to implement hand counting requirements. In Nye County, Nevada, officials moved to a hand count in 2022, but only after polls closed and in conjunction with a machine count. In Shasta County, California, a state law prevented officials from forcing a hand count before the Nov. 7 election.

Last year, it took more than seven hours to count 317 ballots by hand in Nevada's least populated county.

Lawmakers in at least eight states have also proposed mail-in ballot bans in some form.

In April, Arizona's Democratic governor, Katie Hobbs, vetoed a bill that would have essentially mandated hand counts “by prohibiting the use of any known type of electronic tabulator.” Arizona's Republican-controlled legislature passed a similar resolution, but it was deemed non-binding. .

Election officials in some of North Dakota's largest counties are questioning the proposal.

Hand counting “appears to be extremely prone to error,” said Craig Steingaard, elections administrator for Cass County, the state's largest county.

“It would certainly be more difficult for us to organize these elections correctly and then efficiently,” he said.

Debbie Nelson, Grand Forks County Finance and Tax Director, said hand counts “need to be done repeatedly to get the right number. You can't do it just once, and it takes a lot of time to do what the computer can do right away.”

The measure would allow any U.S. citizen to verify or monitor elections in North Dakota. The initiative would also provide that “all voting will not be completed until Election Day,” with absentee ballots only sent to voters “who request them in writing for a specific election within a reasonable time prior to Election Day.” during voting would be 'otherwise prohibited'.

Nearly 44% of voters participated in North Dakota's November 2022 election via early voting or by mail.

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Associated Press writer Gabe Stern contributed to this story from Reno, Nevada.