Campbell County to test hand counting process in October

GILLETTE (WNE) — In October, advocates of hand counting ballots will get a chance to demonstrate their preferred election process.

Campbell County Clerk Cindy Lovelace said that tentatively on Oct. 4, a group of people, led by Campbell County resident Patti Junek, will count more than 1,000 sample general election ballots by hand.

Lovelace said the event will be open to the public to watch, and that she’s still working on finalizing the time and date.

She said she would have preferred to do this once the general election was complete, but that the group wanted to do it before. Oct. 4 was the latest that Lovelace’s office could realistically accommodate, since early voting starts Oct. 8.

On Oct. 3, the election machines will be tested and certified for the general election.

“I’m not saying I support the process. My view on it is – because I know there’s a lot of talk out there – the only way to really know what the process would look like is to test it,” Lovelace said. “Then we’ll have the data to know whether it’s viable.”

The elections office will prepare five sample early ballots and five mail-in ballots from each of Campbell County’s 37 precincts. The group will then fill out the rest of the ballots.

In total, the group will count about 1,100 ballots by hand. Based on the past two presidential elections, this is about 5% of all ballots that will be cast in November.

Once the counting is complete, Lovelace said, she should be able to estimate how many staff she would need, as well as how much her budget would need to be, to count all of an election’s ballots by hand.

This story was published on September 23, 2024.