memfree

Not that it matters, but I was talking about counting filled-in ballots by putting them in stacks of 10 and setting alternate stacks crosswise. Once the polls closed, we did a spot-check at the polling place to ensure we had the expected results – that no one walked out with a ballot and that the machine tally matched a hand count. Hand counts were frequently inaccurate, so two people checked one another and when we found our numbers did not match the machine count, we slowed down and found ourselves in error rather than the machine (which had been fed the ballots slowly over the day rather than in the 1/2 hour we were frantically trying to verify).

I have done this and still miscounted. Pages stick together here and there. Some of my stacks of 10 were 11. Slowing down helped. Having a second person count helped more.