Hand counts help voter confidence

An effort to improve voter confidence in the results of electronic machine tallies is underway via the Citizens for Election Integrity Minnesota and the League of Women Voters. Last year, Minnesota became one of 13 states to require a random precinct hand recount.Mark Halvorson, director of CEIM, explained the process: “Every county will select 2-to-4 random precincts to hand tally, that hand tally will be the official result.”

If the differences are more than 0.5 percent, additional recounts are begun.

CEIM is recruiting volunteers to observe the process. “We are getting citizens to come out and observe in a nonpartisan manner,” Halvorson said. CEIM and LWV are training people in a nonpartisan manner and “every team will be made up of people from all parties,”he said.

Halvorson said that they are “having better luck with some parties than others” but declined to say which parties weren’t turning out as many observers.