Hear an alternate viewpoint from Greens in Colorado.

Folks,

I know some people very passionately about this issue, but I wanted to express a concern: going to hand counts would almost cetainly kill any chance of going to a ranked-choice ballot as needed for instant runoff voting or the choice voting form of proportional representatoin (used to elect the New York city council in the 1930s and 1940s). Election administration costs have been a huge factor in some of our near-misses over the past decade (I believe the decisive factor in the 55% to 45% in the PR campaign in for Cincinnati city council and a big problem in New Mexico for IRV, among many examples). There is unlikely to be any public tolerance for a long hand count of ballots that would be necessary to do instant runoff voting or choice voting -- for those in New York City, note the public's exasperation with the hand-count for the local school board elections.

Some people I respect believe that we can follow Brazil's example and safely go to ATM-style electronic voting -- certainly that's a trend we're seeing internationally, including such nations as Germany and Ireland. One happy medium could be to use precinct-based optical scanners, which would make a ranked-choice ballot count relatively fast and provide a clear paper trail. That was argued in a provocative New York Times op-ed on Monday.

On Canada and some other nations using paper ballots: they typically are voting for only a single office. Once you get into the large number of offices typical of major US elections, the time of the count will jump a great deal - you likely would need a separate ballot paper for every office elected. Please don't follow up with me on this right now. The Center's point-person on election administration is Caleb Kleppner, at calebk@fairvote.org

Thanks,
Rob Richie,
Center for Voting and Democracy