The United States Vote Counting System for Presidential Elections is still somewhat of a mystery to most voters. Vote count processes change by state, and for different parts of the election, so there is no one single answer to “how votes are counted in Presidential elections.” The process is less than official and has caused many problems throughout the years, especially in recent elections as technology has fueled social communication and information sharing. Only those responsible for counting the votes on election day really know how exact and reliable the process is. The truth is that it probably varies drastically from county to county and state to state.
Votes have to be gathered from a variety of sources and in a variety of mediums, sorted and counted before any official result announcements can be made. From early vote ballots to last minute electronic submissions (in certain locations) all need to be counted as accurately as possible by voting officials. We’ve already seen voters question the counting process multiple times during the 2016 election season, and we expect this trend to possibly continue through Election Day in November.
Most recently, vote counting errors in Nevada had originally handed the Democratic Primary win to Hillary Clinton – but this was overturned more than a month after voting had been conducted to name Bernie Sanders the victor. There have been vote count discrepancies in Arizona and Missouri as well, and many anticipate that there may be more questionable results before the next President is elected.
There is a saying that “it doesn’t matter who votes it matters who counts the votes.” While we don’t typically agree with Stalin on much, this quote appears to be more correct today than ever before – despite technological advances that could potentially fix a broken system. Rather than having to gather and count votes for elections, we think that electronic ballots could solve the problem.
By allowing people to vote for President online – in a simple system like ours – voters may actually trust the outcome of elections with data driven popular results. Sure, some would question the validity of the process, but the counting process would be faster and much more accurate than ever before
The way that we count votes and the entire voting process could really use an update. From the voter fraud in 2016. If you were able to vote for President with the click of a button from your home computer – would you?