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politics

The Elections Process: Counting Ballots

Last night was an interesting one.

Official Election Reporting Fax

I got to be an Associated Press stringer for the first time and had to cover the election in Adams County. Part of the night, I sat there and watched the news about the terrible fires blazing around Colorado. Then, we got to see how the whole ballot process worked: quite intricate and still many aspects of the process are done manually.

I had a discussion with one of the other media-people there about why nobody has come up with a more automated process yet. I talked about how a startup could do lots of good for elections with a streamlined process; however, there are issues to tackle in this whole process. The main issue is security: if people vote online, is there a way to verify their signature? Is there a way to keep the whole process secure?

I feel that elections & counting ballots can become a lot more efficient, but perhaps not in this point in time. There are still those who do not own computer access; still so many who want to stay with mail-in ballots. Perhaps 40-50 years from now, we can see the digitized voting process come into effect successfully. Then again, we don’t know what will happen between now and then!

I stayed at the Elections Center in Adams County up until midnight; results were slowly posted, but we got them done. I’m glad I got the opportunity to see the whole process & contribute to the Associated Press. I’m sure the process for the General Election in November will be much more complicated (and stressful!). Will be interesting to see if I can be a Stringer for November.