Comment on Election conspiracy theories fueled a push to hand-count votes, but doing so is risky and slow

By CHRISTINE FERNANDO CHICAGO (AP) — Four years of Donald Trump’s false claims about a stolen 2020 election have kindled growing suspicion of voting machines among conspiracy theorists. One of their solutions is to replace the tabulators that count every vote with people who will do that by hand. Controversies over the issue have flared periodically in pockets of the country before the 2024 presidential election even though research has shown that hand-counting is more prone to error, costlier and likely to delay results. The few counties that have attempted the massive task have found the process more time-consuming, expensive and inaccurate than expected. In Texas’ Gillespie County, a hand-count of Republican primary election ballots this year stretched into the early morning hours, taking almost 24 consecutive hours with 200 people counting ballots, the Texas Tribune and VoteBeat reported.