A Republican election expert slammed one of the top MAGA demands as impossible and “asinine in the extreme.”
In a recent interview, Stephen Richer, the former Maricopa County recorder and a fellow at the Cato Institute, tore apart the idea of hand counting ballots.
Legal reporter Adam Klasfeld asked Richer if the “loudly demanded” idea from election denialists would “do anything to make elections operate faster or more accurately?”
“This is asinine in the extreme,” Richer said. “If you think California is tabulating ballots slowly now, as I do, and we can get into how California can speed that up, but they wouldn’t be done for six months if we were having them hand count all of those ovals.”
Richer brought up that supporters of hand tabulation argue, “France can do it,” but countered, “France has one election every so often, and they have one item on the ballot.”
He explained that California, by contrast, “will probably have about eighty-plus contests” on the average ballot in November.
“You multiply that over a few million, not just a few million, but close to 20 million voters,” Richer explained. “It would be far less accurate. It would be far less fast and be far more expensive.”
U.S. election officials “do hand count ballots” for audits, and “that’s an important feature of an election system.” He also supported paper ballots, saying they’re “a good thing because it creates an immutable, unhackable, auditable paper trail.”
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