If You Like Farmers Markets, You Will Love Hand Counting
An Op Ed by the EDA
I like going to Farmers Markets and recently when enumerating the reasons why in a conversation, it occurred to me that those reasons are some of the same reasons I like the idea of counting our votes by hand.
Community
Going to the market is an opportunity to interact with your local Community. Just being around other people is comforting and in some sense interesting (for most of us, even the introverts). Perhaps you will interact with or make new friends. Perhaps you will have a conversation or experience that changes your life in some way if you are open to it. Being social on a regular basis is healthy.
Counting votes by hand with other people in your PRECINCT builds the same type of social connections. When I go to the polls to vote in person in my community, I always have some conversation or experience I remember. Typically the people are very friendly and helpful. Let’s extend that opportunity to build community through hand counting votes.
Multi-Generational Agreement
Look at the picture above. What I like about it is that it is a man and a woman of a different generation having a social interaction about vegetables. They talk. They come to an agreement. Both walk away happy with the result.
Counting votes by hand brings together many generations who can agree on something. This is an opportunity to reinvigorate the societal norm.
Trust
I have come to the point in this AI driven world that the things I truly believe are real are those things I can see in person. Like meeting the person selling me my food at the farmers market and shaking there hand. Their demeanor gives me an understanding of how much I can TRUST them that is irreplaceable with any other medium.
Meeting someone from a different political party at a hand counting event should be a Trust building exercise. Perhaps it is not and that is good to understand as well. We can build Trust if it does not exist. However, Trust must be EARNED to be meaningful. You can’t have that relationship with a machine. There is no trusting a black box machine, it is only BLIND FAITH.
Responsibility
Counting at the Farmers market is accomplished typically by-weight for produce or by piece. When I execute the transaction and I can see what has been weighed or counted in person, there is a certain sense of satisfaction of knowing that I am getting EXACTLY what I paid for.
It is not delivered by DoorDash or Amazon or pre-packaged in an OPAQUE box. I can’t complain later that I didn’t get what I paid for. It is my Responsibility to accept the result and live with it. If I make a bad choice, I change my behavior the next time I go to the market.
With hand counting, it is the same idea. There is no black box that tells a result that must be believed. Human beings doing the counting and those watching get exactly what they “paid for” and can trust the result. We accept Responsibility for the result, even if it involves more effort. Acceptance also involves the acknowledgement that your contest may not come out as desired. There is nobody else to blame, try harder the next time. That is your Responsibility.
Keeping Money Local
Even though I am likely paying more for a tomato at a farmers market than I would pay for it at Walmart, there is some satisfaction, in a moral sense, that the money I am spending is staying in the community and not feeding a corporate machine based in China or owned by Blackrock.
When you count votes by hand, I would argue that money spent on machines would better be spent on PEOPLE, lots of them, even if it is not a cost saving measure to do so. Many cases studies have been done where counting by hand is actually cost REDUCTION.
These machines companies are owned by foreign nationals and they contract with our governments for millions of dollars. Why not spend it on local people, just like we do with local farmers?
We spend more on vegetables at the Farmer’s Market. We should not look at hand counting votes as a bad idea just because it MIGHT cost more. In many cases it will cost LESS. Quality is more important than COST considerations.
Reverence
You are about to eat something that is grown organically in a farm down the road from a person you know and whose farm you have visited. I can actually do this where I live. This provides me with a certain amount of Reverence. I also have a feeling of Reverence for the farmer when I am able to see and experience the farm.
Counting votes by hand I would suggest instills in us a level of Reverence for the process of voting and perhaps even causes us to reflect on what it means to vote and the sacrifice by others involved in giving us the right to vote. This is a healthy moral perspective to have.
Heritage
Farming is a skill passed down from generation to generation with a respect for the land. Farmers are passionate about what they do and part of that passion is the connection to the Heritage of farming itself.
We have a Heritage as a Free people too. We The People not only have the right to VOTE, but we have the right to understand how votes are COUNTED and count them ourselves. This is our Heritage. Let’s reclaim what is rightfully ours.
Final Words
Still not convinced?
Perhaps you are labelling me a “Election Denier”?
That’s fine.
I have just invented another term. “Farmers Market Denier”.