Missouri Secretary of State welcomes group demonstrating hand counting ballots at state capitol

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (KCTV) - Missouri’s top election official continues his push for hand-counting as he invites a group to demonstrate it at the state capitol.

Handing counting is one of the changes President Donald Trump is encouraging states to implement in his election security push. Secretary of State Denny Hoskins is a longtime er of hand counting. Hoskins ran for office on the promise of increasing election integrity. Part of his plan to do so includes more hand counting and less machine tabulation.

In the Wednesday morning demonstration, a team of four read through a ballot, one person saying the number that corresponds with a specific result, another marking it in a spreadsheet. It took the team about an hour to get through a box of about 100 ballots.

Currently, Missouri’s local election officials have to hand-count 5% of the ballots after the election to make sure that the sample size matches the results from the voting machines. The only way hand counting could be mandated throughout Missouri is for the legislature to change the law, but county election clerks can choose to hand count.

Hoskins’s top complaint is that machines are vulnerable to hackers. There are no reported incidents of hackers interfering with Missouri elections.

“What we’ve seen is there’s been some software error or some glitch and many times those machines have not recorded those votes correctly,” Hoskins said.

Hoskins said hand-counting could increase voters’ sense of security.

“We want to make sure that Missourians have confidence, the utmost confidence in their elections, and unfortunately some Missourians just don’t have that confidence right now,” Hoskins said.

Cole County Election Clerk Steve Korsmeyer opposes hand counting and said using voting machines is faster and more accurate. He said there is no danger to his knowledge of hacking because voting machines are not connected to the internet.

Korsmeyer said hand counting takes much longer and counties would struggle to find enough volunteers to help.

“I’d like to see them sign up to be an election judge, work a 14 hour day and then I’ll hand them a thousand ballots to sit and count the rest of the night if that’s what they want to do,” Korsmeyer said.

A Harvard University study showed hand counted ballots could be off by 8% while machines average 0.5% discrepancies.

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