A Moral Alternative to Immoral Voting Machines: Count by Weight
Election machines are immoral. My reasons are stated here.
The immediate MORAL imperative is to bypass all the discussions about the current voting machine technology that is a never ending expenditure of valuable Patriot time and rather use that time to promote and build a different future that does not depend on hackable overly complex technology that the public does not and can never understand……otherwise known as voting machines. Regardless of whether you believe voting machines and hackable or not, one thing is irrefutably TRUE. The general public WILL NEVER understand black box voting machines.
The solution….
Manual Count by Weight Voting.
For this case study, I will use a ballot from the 2020 election. Let’s break down the ballot structure first then discuss the Count by Weigh approach.
The ballot is broken down into the following sections:
Federal - 3 contests
State - 15 contests
County - 3 contests
School District - 4 contests
Other - 4 contests
There are a total of 29 contest for which voters are to make 1 choice.
Let me state the obvious. This ballot is designed to be filled out by a human but it is NOT designed to be counted by a human. It is design to be counted by a machine. This is a challenge for all of the current manual count methods I have seen that are manually counting something that was never intended for a HUMAN to count.
What would a ballot look like that is DESIGNED to be counted by HUMANS?
I would offer this. Humans find it much easier to SORT manually than they COUNT manually. How would manually sorting and counting of votes by HUMANS be implemented?
Let’s imagine a precinct voting center using Count by Weight with the following attributes.
Mail in voting by absentee ballot request only, no universal mail in ballots. Absentee voters would use a traditional ballot.
2,000-3,000 people per precinct.
Voting occurs in person with an ID.
Voters check in by signing a paper registration book.
You can only vote in your precinct.
Given all of the above, why do we need to Count by Weight when we can just take the standard ballot above and count it manually? I would propose that Count by Weight is far less tedious, faster and less prone to error. In other words, being gaslight by the Brennan Center for Justice can be avoided or minimized with Count by Weight. LOL.
Here is an example of how the process would work.
I check in at my precinct. I enter a que managed by the poll workers. There may be more than one que per precinct but, likely due to the size of the precinct, one que would be enough. That que is comprised of 29 Contest Voting Stations for this example given the number of contests. One station per Contest.
The voter walks up to a table at a Contest Voting Station and is given what looks like a dollar bill size piece of paper. The paper has the same weight and characteristics (including serial numbers) of currency. This is our Voting Currency.
The back has a description of the contest to be voted on. The front has the choices to be marked with a ball point pen. The poll worker hands the voter this Voting Currency for that contest and they step behind a curtain and mark the choice. They come from behind the curtain and publicly drop the Voting Currency in a locked and sealed box. This is not a tabulator, just a plain old box.
Then they can choose to exit the que if they do not feel like voting on any other contests or continue to the next contest voting station. They can vote on as many contests as they like, one time of course.
Note: Before we start critiquing the process and asking questions like, “How do you prevent people from jumping back in the que?”, which is a relevant question, let’s continue with the case study. I will address these details later.
This process of voters checking in, entering a que, entering a Contest Station, being given one item of Voting Currency, marking it, depositing it and then moving through the que continues until the polls close.
When the polls close, the relatively simple process of Counting by Weight can begin. But actually……..Counting by Weight has already started. How?
That is because as part of the quality controls built into the Counting by Weight process, each box that accumulates the Voting Currency for each contest sits on a calibrated digital scale. This provides real time cumulative weight totals (counts of votes, not a tally of votes indicated locally, not networked) of the Voting Currency. Weight can be easily translated to Counts and provides the poll workers with a quality check to see how many Votes were cast per Contest. That number should never be higher than the number of people registered at that precinct. This would be the maximum contest weight per box.
Let me state the obvious. Each piece of Voting Currency weighs the EXACT same amount to a level of accuracy that a calibrated scale would be able to detect when one and only one piece of Voting Currency is deposited.
(The weight of a dollar bill is 1 gram. Let’s assume then that out Voting Currency is also 1 gram.)
In fact, such boxes can be designed to weigh a single piece of Voting Currency BEFORE it is allowed to be placed into the cumulative box if desired but these are details that will be left for another time.
What is the process then for the poll workers to accurately and quickly provide the count? After all, we are NOT asking Voters to place a vote for Candidate A in the A Box and Candidate B in the B box. Placing of the Voting Currency into the contest box is a SACRED MORAL ACTION and needs to be done in public view. By necessity to maintain a secret vote, the Voting Currency is co-mingled for all choices per contest box.
A team of bi-partisan poll workers records the final weight of the box which reflects the number of votes in the box. Each vote weight 1 gram. The poll workers then break the lock and seal on the contest box and dump it onto a large table in full view of the public and while being live streamed. Sound crazy? Here is an example from New Zealand of HUMANS processing votes on a table in public view (although they do not count by weight).
This would be a good time to elaborate further on the Voting Currency and it’s characteristics
Printed on the same paper as US currency and the same size.
Each Contest’s currency would be imprinted with a different alpha-numeric code. For example, the Presidential race Voting Currency would all have the letter A-1.
Federal race for Senate would have A-2 for example and so on.
Each contest would also be printed on paper that is a different color. For example, all A-1 currency would be green, B-1 would be blue. This makes sorting by code and color very simple. Those poll workers who might be color blind could use the alphanumeric code.
Each piece of voting currency would have a serial number and just like a dollar bill would have other fraud prevention and detection measure built in.
The precinct would know the serial numbers of the Voting Currency issued to them by Contest for later auditing should it be needed.
If the government can print food coupons, why can’t they issue Voting Currency?
Back to the Counting by Weight procedure that is simple enough for an 18 year old with a high school education to understand. That is the entire point of Count by Weight.
The Voting Currency on the table for single contest is checked to be only for that contest meaning for the presidential race only A-1 Green currency is in the pile. Then the bi-partisan SORTING of the Voting Currency begins into different stacks that include:
Clear vote for a candidate by choice.
Undervote or no vote.
Overvote or multiple votes.
Other.
To be clear, the poll workers are NOT COUNTING anything, they are simply SORTING. When the sorting is complete, the Voting Currency is subdivided into manageable substacks (if needed) to fit on the scale. Then each of those substacks is weighed on a set of three different calibrated highly precise digital scales. An example of which is below. These scales are sensitive enough too for example, sense that a single staple has been removed from a stapler.
Calibrated scales are inexpensive technology when compared to a voting machine. The scale pictured here retail cost is $2,000 USD. There is no proprietary computer code on them and they can be independently calibrated. And because they are being used to weigh different votes within the same contest using the same CALIBRATION, there is NO WAY to tilt the results in one direction….aka FRAUD.
The weight of each stack is recorded on a log and on an envelope in which that Voting Currency is sealed for archiving. The weight is easily translated into a Count without any opportunity for a bad count because of the absolute repeatable precision provided by a machine, in this case a simple calibrated scale. Human beings are relieved of the tedious process of manual counting and only are required to SORT and manage a que.
Remember, the Voting Currency per Contest has been weighed three separate times in an open and bi-partisan manner that is live streamed and/or recorded.
When a single Contest is done with Count by Weight, this same process is repeated for each of the 29 Contests. Undervotes are essentially a blank piece of Voting Currency someone deposited. Overvotes are dealt with per the local procedures. Votes that fall into the “Other” category would need to be manually adjudicated. The advantage is that instead of adjudicating an entire ballot, one piece of Voting Currency is adjudicated. Far simpler. Of course there are more details to be worked out on how to handle Over, Under and Other votes in this method.
There is no personal information shared for this process of using Voting Currency because the process is entirely random. The serial number of the currency given to the voter at each Contest Station is not pre-determined and not recorded.
At the end of the day, the ledger could be reconciled between the amount of Voting Currency issued to the precinct and the amount they have at the end of the day which should never be more or less than what was issued. Standard accounting practices could be used for this reconciliation of currency.
Finally, there may be variations on this Count by Weight method that we can refine going forward. Let’s not miss the main point.
Counting by Weight is precise.
Counting using a simple scale is a process everyone can understand, unlike a voting machine.
Humans find sorting much easier than manual counting.
Aligning our votes with the concept of Voting Currency helps to understand the value of our Vote.
Today’s hand counting procedures use ballots that are not deigned for HUMAN counting.
Manual Counting by Weight is a moral endeveaor.
POST Publishing Updates 10/17/23 from Questions I Received
These scales are not networked, it is a dumb terminal that reads weight.
The tally’s do not occur until the polls close and the tally is recorded manually in a log book and manually transmitted to a central location. Remember, it is a simple scale.
Fraudulent Voting Currency would need to be detected using similar technology to what we use for currency. The Voting Currency is handed to the person at the Contest Station.
Absentee vote counting is not addressed by this method other than to say in my assumptions, we would have to put an end to universal mail in voting and rely on absentee ballot requests.
There would be a space for write ins on the Voting Currency. The weight of the ink to write someone’s name compared to the weight of the Voting Currency itself *might* need to be accounted for in the scale calibration sensitivity. Remember, write ins would be SORTED into a separate pile from non-write ins. Manually COUNTING write ins ONLY would not be a big ask.
For reference, there are also counting scales that might be a more direct option.
this article is invaluable and a great example of what we need to do going forward - engage out of the box thinking to show that there are easy and simple solutions that most people can understand.
The difficulty is that the US Constitution mandates time, place and manner to the States. Any changes would require an amendment. What it doesn’t specify is method although manner can be argued to include method.