In this space, we here at CTGOP pounded our rhetorical fists on the ephemeral table that is the Internet after the municipal elections because of the Secretary of the State’s decision that required localities to “hand recount” every ballot cast by voters.  We protested that the process was inefficient and terribly inaccurate.  We sharply criticized the Secretary of the State’s office for their weak-knee responses and vacillation on key issues.  As it turns out, we were right.

This article that you may have missed from the Rocky Mountain News has the quote of the day in it:

“Activists pushing for more integrity in Colorado’s voting system want an election where paper ballots are counted by hand.

But hand counts have nearly twice the error rate of tallying paper ballots by machine, experts say, and there’s good reason why the old-fashioned system was largely abandoned years ago.

“The human error inherent in hand counting overwhelms the mechanical problems of scanning,” said Charles Stewart, chair of the political science department at MIT and an expert on election forensics. “There is a reason why businesses use adding machines. Human beings are really bad at doing tedious tasks. That’s why automation is a premium in elections.”