Who counts the votes???

[rubberducky]

Who is totally responsable for the vote count?? Surely there must be one person, org., or computor that has the final decision. I do not understand how this works, but I`m very curious about who has the final word. Who announces which party has won?

[Igel]

1. Where?

It varies a bit, from country and county to country and county.

In the places I've lived in the US, there's been a bipartisan board with some nominally a-partisan staff.

The one place where I was a poll worker, we used lever machines. Each precinct had two dems and two repubs. We read off the results in the polling place, with one dem/one repub doing the reading, and one pair doing the writing on two separate sheets. We verified that the voter registration book had the same number of people that signed in as there were "ballots" cast on the machines, plus with "affadavit ballots" ("provisional ballots", under HAVA), and that the unofficial tally we kept on a notepad was in harmony with that total. Then we locked the machine, and turned the keys into the BOE that night with the tally sheets. The provisional ballots were turned in, unopened.

The tally sheets were used by the equally bipartisan BOE to produce the election night returns, with the provisional ballots retained for later review. The announced winner that night was unofficial. Then, over the course of the next week or two, they'd take the keys and crack open the machines to produce their own tallies. Then they'd compare them with the tallies that we turned in, and double-check any discrepancies. They'd open the provisional ballots and decide if they were valid or not. Then they'd produce the final certified results, and the winner would be official for any given race in that county. The state and national returns would be sent to Albany.

In California where we had punch cards they'd transport the ballot boxes to the central counting facility.

Here, in Houston, where they have e-Slate devices, I have no idea. It may be that they coordinate with a central facility, or it may be that they produce some local record and the results are written to some medium that's transferred to the BOE.

[rubberducky]

2. Thank you!

At least I`m getting a little more "feel", for where our votes are counted. Forgot that DU is international, I was asking about the US elections.

[Stevepol]

3. They usually carry the single card or cartridge to the central tabulator.

It's there that the final touches of the rigging are done in total secrecy. If the inherent tilt of the machine as built in at the factory is not enough to assure a Repub victory, a technician or other official or expert from the vendor comes in to check the machine and inserts the program needed to provide the correct percentage victory.

I could be wrong on the details, but the basic principle probably holds true nationally.