Some Wyomingites are pushing for ballots to be hand counted instead of using the tabulator machines that all 23 counties have used since 2020. That call is particularly strong from a political action committee called Wyoming Election Integrity. So, a month before this year’s general election, Campbell County Clerk Cindy Lovelace hosted the group to run a test trial to estimate the time, manpower and cost. Wyoming Public Radio’s Nicky Ouellet spoke to Lovelace about the test.
A member of Wyoming Election Integrity says Lovelace’s estimates are inflated.
Editor’s note: This interview was edited lightly for brevity and clarity.
Nicky Ouellet: What prompted you to want to run a test trial of hand counting?
Cindy Lovelace: Well, there’s been a lot of discussion about hand counting ballots, locally here in our county and around the state. So I just felt it was important to gather some data on the process and to look at the potential time [and] potential cost of hand counting ballots. That way, if it did go to legislation, we had some actual facts and data that the legislators could use.
NO: Who was invited to participate in this exercise and who showed up?
CL: I invited a representative of the Wyoming Election Integrity group to facilitate the test trial and to use their tabulation system that they’ve been trained on. We held it on Oct. 4 in the chambers in Campbell County.
There were 43 people who participated. Forty of those were counters, three were facilitators. Twenty-nine of those people were from Campbell County and 14 were from other counties in the state.
NO: Can you talk me through what did you do? What kind of scenario did you set up? What instructions did they get?
CL: We prepared 1,110 sample ballots for the test trial. That consisted of 30 ballots from each of our 37 precincts in Campbell County. Of those 30 ballots, we had 20 ballots that represented votes cast on election day. We had five ballots that represented mail in ballots and five ballots that represented early voting ballots.
We started the test by sorting the absentee ballots and getting those prepared for the count, because those come in at a different time. The actual hand count process began about 9:45 a.m. There were 10 teams of four, and each team of four was given two precincts to count. Each precinct consisted of 30 ballots, so that was 60 ballots total for each team of four.
They have a tabulation sheet and they have a process that they were instructed by the facilitators on how the tabulation works. They were given some pre-prepared binders that gave them all the materials that they needed.
Using their process, they tabulated their ballot. They have one person who calls out the name on the ballot. They have two people that are marking the tabulation sheets, and then one other person who oversees.
NO: How long did it take them to finish the count?
CL: We started at 9:45 a.m. They each took a break for lunch. The facilitators stopped the test at 5 p.m. By that time, we had four of the 10 teams that had completed their count of 60 ballots. We had a total of 240 ballots that were completed out of the 1,110. I calculated the total count time at approximately 6.75 hours.
NO: How does that compare to primary night this year, when you were using the tabulation machines?
CL: Our results are tabulated in real time on the election voting machines when the polls are closed. Then the election judges close down the voting machine and provide us with the results from each of the machines. Then it’s just a matter of uploading those results and providing those to the secretary of state. We have to have those into the secretary of state by 10:30 p.m. on the night of election, and the polls close at 7 p.m.
NO: After running this hand count scenario, what are your big takeaways or learnings?
CL: I calculated some results from what we found during that test trial and I used some data from the last presidential election. In that election in 2020, we had 19,735 ballots. This general election, we have 23 races on each of our ballots.
I used those numbers to calculate an estimated number of people needed [and] amount of time it would take to count the ballots. Just given a timeline of four hours – and this number comes from the Wyoming Election Integrity group. We’d be looking at close to 20,000 ballots. The number of people that it would take, on the minimum, would be around 550 people, and it could be up to 1,000 or more.
Getting that number of people trained and in place to count the ballots would be one of the first challenges that we’d see. The second challenge would be: When would we start the count? Would we bring in new staff? What would our staffing hours in overtime look like? Because by that time when the polls are closed, my staff’s been for 18 to 20 hours already. So what would that look like if then we began hand counting ballots?
The other big question I have that we weren’t able to really address during the test trial is how we would test the accuracy of the hand count process. Right now, we have a procedure to test our voting machines for accuracy, but what would that accuracy test look like for the hand count process? When you have human discretion, fatigue, human error, all of those elements that could be involved in determining the election day results – how would we test that accuracy?
NO: That’s a great question. How do you do the audit?
CL: One person could look at a mark on a ballot and count it as a vote, where another person may not count it as a vote. Right now, the machine has specific criteria on what it counts and what it does not count. It will reject ballots that have an overvote for a race. In a hand count situation, that voter would not be aware that they had overvoted and that their vote wouldn’t count for that race. There are some checks and balances right now with the machines to give the voter an opportunity to correct their ballot, where in a handcuff situation the voter would not have that opportunity.
NO: I’m curious what you heard from participants after the test trial.
CL: Some of the people that I talked to were surprised on how easy it is to make a mistake, even on their tally sheet. You really have to be very focused through the entire process without any distractions. But [the] majority of them who participated said that they would be willing to do it again, and they were still in favor of hand counting.
