Election-Campaign Law

Elections in the News

By inelefi

Polls Close, A Long Night Still Ahead

You would think electronic ballots could be quickly tallied.  That is not always so, and here’s why. First machines  have to be “decommissioned.”  Pollworkers have to take each machine’s memory card, wrap it in the paper printout, put it in a bag and lock it…. After the memory cards are secure, they are driven to the elections counting office[,]…walked up to the counting area where [they are] unlocked, and the card is manually inserted into a digital reader, which counts the votes.” Thus, although the actual counting then happens immediately, it takes a while to do this for all of the thousands of machines.

So don’t expect final tallies anytime soon, regardless of electronic counting.  Pollworkers still have a long night ahead of them!

Inés and Janell

Full post as published by Election Updates on November 04, 2008 (boomark / email).