Some locales count ballots by hand as elections scrutinized

Volunteers in Nevada’s Nye County started counting mail-in ballots Wednesday and worked through about 900 of the nearly 2,000 votes already cast. There are about 33,000 voters registered in the rural county. In Nevada, the senate race between Democratic senator Catherine Cortez Masto and Republican challenger Adam Laxalt is being closely watched. Supervisors in Cochise County, Ariz., this week also decided to require a hand count. Last week, Miami-Dade County, Fla., election officials tested the voting machines for accuracy, running through the whole voting process while voters and candidates watched. 

Why are they counting by hand? Normally, machines count all the ballots on Election Day and hand counts are used afterward in some cases to double-check the machines. Nye County commissioners changed the method of voting after complaints about the accuracy of the voting machines during the 2020 election. Both Nye County and Cochise County will still use voting machines but plan to compare those results with the hand-counted results.  

Dig deeper: Read Carolina Lumetta and Leo Briceno’s Arizona Election Guide in The Stew.