From Newsgroup: rec.arts.tv
On Tue, 23 Jun 2026 20:58:24 -0000 (UTC), BTR1701 <
atropos@mac.com>
wrote:
The country of Colombia just held their elections and they counted 99.8% of >their 25+ million ballots in under three hours. Meanwhile, Los Angeles still >hasn't been able to deliver a final count in the mayoral election involving >only 875,000 ballots.
Did Columbia hand count all ballots?
Reason I ask is that when I was counting votes there were 7 or 8 of us
at each table and the poll clerk kept each box locked until we were
ready. We were given a stack of votes and unfolded each creating a
small stack for each candidate then counting them. When each stack of
ballots was counting we moved the to the person next to us and by the
time each of us were done all of us had counted every vote. The poll
clerk then filled in a 1 page report with the result of each
candidate. We had 4 or 5 ballot boxes per table to count and got it
all done in under 2 hours and when we were done the clerk got us to
load the boxes into her car which she then delivered to the voting
district HQ. Not sure whether they transcribed each into a spreadsheet
or not (I did the 1979 and 1980 which was the days of Visicalc and MS
Office 1.0 so they could have though I'm certain they do now)
My whole point is that our part of the job took 2-3 hours and if you
give them an hour to get the physical ballots to HQ that's 4 hours -
it's just not that complicated to do an all manual ballot (e.g.
without voting machines)
--- Synchronet 3.21d-Linux NewsLink 1.2