First on today’s BradCast: Why Rush Limbaugh believes NASA has faked their discovery of flowing liquid water on Mars. Then, why MSNBC completely ignored Bernie Sanders on last night’s Rachel Maddow Show.
Then, onto our interview with Virginia Martin and Jason Nastke, the Democratic and Republican Election Commissioners (respectively) of Columbia County, NY, where they refuse to certify results until every hand-marked paper ballot is publicly counted by hand after each election.
The two Commissioners joined me to respond to a recent Brennan Center study [PDF] warning that the nation’s voting computers and tabulators are aging and failing and should be replaced as soon as possible with new computer systems. I agree with the first part of their findings, not so much with the second part, both of which we discussed in a recent BradCast with Lawrence Norden, co-author of that well-reported study.
Martin and Nastke don’t seem to agree either, finding that hand-marked paper ballots, publicly hand-counted by human beings, remain the best way to assure that every voter’s intent is accurately and transparently tallied.
“In reality, computing is maybe 50 years old,” the Republican Nastke tells me on today’s program. “We use paper ballots and paper is hundreds, if not thousands of years old. Historical documents continue to exist to this day. So, what we know is that when a voter votes on a paper ballot that there is an absolute way for the voter’s intent to be determined, and properly counted.”
“When New York State and the federal government mandated that we use optical scans instead, I started looking at those systems, and my question was, how do I know that that result is the right result?,” says the Democrat Martin. “I’m not going to be able to see how the voting machines added up the votes. So I’m not going to know and I’m going to have to certify these results and I feel very uncomfortable doing that. So how can I know that the machine results are correct? Well, we have the paper ballots, let’s count them.”
“It’s not a Republican or a Democrat issue,” Nastke insists. “The issue is one of what’s right. And what is right is that every vote is counted.” Martin adds: “The fact is that I and Jason are both very, very confident in the results that we certify. And I must say that I think the voters in our county are similarly confident. The candidates whose votes — for or against — we are counting, are similarly confident. If we’ve got a candidate that lost by a few votes, and they’ve been here and they’ve watched the process, they are very confident that they did truly lose.”
“It works very well because it’s so bipartisan. For every Democrat who is doing something, a Republican is watching like a hawk,” she says. “And it’s very, very accurate. People are thrilled to see how the process works, to understand how it works, and to actually be a part of it and see what the result is.”
Martin recently responded in comments here at The BRAD BLOG following my interview with Norden. She expands on some of those thoughts today, as both Commissioners explain why they — and their respective political parties in the county — have been able to buck national trends to agree on hand-counting ballots, rather than using unverifiable computer systems.
I ask them, among many other questions, why other counties in New York state have yet to adopt their system?; Whether they have found errors from the optical-scan computers which initially tally ballots at each precinct (as required by the state) before the hand-count takes place?; Whether they believe humans or computers are able to count ballots more accurately? (Norden had asserted that computers were more accurate during our conversation last week); Why they don’t hand-count at the precinct, rather than back at County headquarters?; Could their system work in a much larger county or is hand-counting only for small jurisdictions?; And what happens in those instances when party observers don’t agree on voter intent or a voter has left their intent unclear?
We first reported on Columbia County turning to 100% hand-counts back in 2012, but this is the first time either Martin or Nastke has joined me on the show! So it’s great to have them! Here’s a recent article on Columbia “becoming known for hand-counting votes” from one of their local papers. Look close and you’ll see some films and books I’ve contributed to sitting in front of Martin in the paper’s photo! 🙂
Please listen to the full interview on today’s show…
Brad,
Thanks for shining some light on election integrity issues. I live in Columbia County, NY and am delighted that our BOE commissioners are taking a responsible approach to ballot counting. One of the good things about hand-counting is that is has the effect of being a pre-emptive barrier to electoral manipulation. Anyone who is having thoughts about fixing an election is going to be deterred by the knowledge that a thorough review will be undertaken.
Peter Jung @ 1:
Great points, Peter. And you’ve got 2 election officials that the voters can be very proud of out there in Columbia!
I live in Columbia County. Our Board of Elections is accessible, courteous and able. As a candidate, (town board, Germantown) I know my job is to win votes and not worry about whether they will be counted. They will.
One burden off our shoulders. And by the way watching he absentee ballots being counted is a treat.
Time for Rush to lay-off the OxyContin.
Well thats one area that Tpublicans wont steal.
Mars or Columbia County?
With the republicans always worrying that democrats are stealing our elections, they should be just as worried about the voting machines as the democrats. For some reason they aren’t.
This is great! True bipartisan cooperation between two election officials results in elections you can take to the bank, for a change!
A pilot project for the entire country to learn from.
I love it!