* *** BALLOT_COUNT_HISTORY TXT - 6 Nov 2024 11:57:40 - JGKNAUTH For many elections we had counted the number of ballots in each pack as soon as it was opened. Often we found that there were either more or fewer than 100 ballots in a "100" pack as shown below. That problem has considerably lessened over the years, presumably because the printer began doing a more careful packing job. The WCBOE no longer considers any small discrepancy from 100 to be a serious problem, although it will be recorded on the Reconciliation Form during end-of-day processing of the ballot inventory. Given all that, for the 5/8/18 election we will not do any counting and see how end-of-day ballot reconciliation goes. If significant problems are found, we will have to resume counting in future elections. I didn't start closely monitoring and reporting the counts until late in 2008. We had been warned in a class that year that the packs might not have exactly 100 ballots. Then after the especially bad differences from 100 were found in the 2011 elections, I began to record even more details. The following table is a summary of what I had noted in postmortem reports and later in Ballot Count Reconciliation web pages. For an example of how to read the table, in the 5/4/10 election, five packs were opened and three were found to be bad. Two had only 99 ballots (100 - 1) and one had 101 ballots (100 + 1). Starting in 2012 I also began to record the number of unopened packs. Of course any unopened packs were assumed to contain exactly 100 ballots. Number Normal Ballot "100" Packs "100" Packs ExpressVote of Normal Election Discrepancies Opened Unopened Opened/Unopened Styles -------- ----------------- ----------- ------------ --------------- ----------- * 11/04/08 -1,-1,-1 9 (Unrecorded) - (Unrecorded) 10/06/09 0 2 (Unrecorded) - (Unrecorded) * 5/04/10 -1,+1,-1 5 (Unrecorded) - (Unrecorded) 11/02/10 0 5 (Unrecorded) - (Unrecorded) * 10/11/11 -2,-2,-2,-1,-1,-1 6 (Unrecorded) - (Unrecorded) * 11/08/11 +1,+2,+1,+1,+1 5 (Unrecorded) - (Unrecorded) * 5/08/12 +2,+1 9 (See note) 13 - 8 * 7/17/12 -1 2 12 - 2 * 11/06/12 +1 9 11 - 2 01-43 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 10/08/13 0 6 21 - 1 19-09 11/05/13 0 1 12 - 1 * 5/06/14 +3 8 24 - 4 7/15/14 0 1 5 - 1 * 11/04/14 -2,-1 16 16 - 1 10/06/15 0 4 22 - 1 * 11/03/15 +1 5 9 - 1 * 3/15/16 +1,-1 20 16 - 7 6/07/16 0 6 29 - 3 11/08/16 0 10 21 - 1 19-09 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 11/07/17 0 10 27 - 2 19-19 X 5/08/18 -5 (counting not done) 6 36 - 2 * 11/06/18 -1, -1 17 43 - 1 X 11/05/19 0 (counting not done) 9 32 - 2 X 3/03/20 30 (counting not done) 16 42 - 5 X 11/03/20 0 (counting not done) 7 28 - 1 X 11/02/21 0 (counting not done) 13 36 - 2 X 5/17/22 0 (counting not done) 10 61 - 2 * 7/26/22 0 2 18 - 1 X 11/08/22 0 (counting not done) 21 35 - 3 X 11/07/23 0 (counting not done) 12 41 0/4 2 X 3/05/24 2 (counting not done) 15 53 1/3 3 (1 ballot X 5/14/24 0 (counting not done) 2 19 1/3 short) 1 X 11/05/24 0 (counting not done) 11 49 0/4 short) 1 -------- ----------------- ------------- ----------- ---------------- --------- Normal Ballot "100" Packs "100" Packs ExpressVote Number Election Discrepancies Opened Unopened Opened/Unopened of Normal Styles Note: In the 5/8/12 election there were also 5 small packs of 20 each. They each had the right count of 20. Jeff Knauth