HAND COUNTING

Many places running ranked choice voting elections count those elections by hand. While the counting process is more complicated and time consuming than the counting for a simple plurality election, it is still easily done by hand and is highlighted by cybersecurity experts as a more transparent counting process than machine counting. In general, election judges/clerks start with sorting out ballots by what candidate is ranked first on those ballots, then further sort those by second, third, and later rankings. Telluride, Colorado’s hand count procedures are a good example of best practices for hand counting ranked choice voting elections. There is a link to them below. Takoma Park has also used hand counting for RCV in the past, their procedures are available below as well. Ireland and Northern Ireland hand count their nationwide single- and multi-winner RCV elections, and Australia hand counts their single-winner RCV elections.