Despite not having the most money or the flashiest social media strategy, state Sen. Denny Hoskins emerged as the winner of the crowded GOP primary for secretary of state.
And since moving on to the general election against Democratic state Rep. Barbara Phifer, Hoskins provoked attention for his campaign platform to hand-count ballots instead of using tabulating machines.
“Hand-counting ballots is the very simplest, safest way to go,” Hoskins said earlier this year. “Would it require some more manpower in order for us to do that? Most certainly. But I think overall, it would be safer than our election machines.”
But St. Louis County’s Republican and Democratic election directors strongly disagree with Hoskins.
During an episode of the Politically Speaking Hour on St. Louis on the Air, St. Louis County Democratic elections director Eric Fey and St. Louis County Republican elections director Rick Stream said hand-counting ballots would mean an end to finding out results on Election Day. They also said there is no evidence that hand-counting is a more accurate way of determining election results.
“I don't think it's a very good idea at all,” said Stream, who served in the Missouri House with Hoskins from 2009 through 2015. “It would take us weeks to count each one of those ballots and each one of those races. And frankly, the results would not be nearly as accurate as our machine counts.”
During an interview with St. Louis Public Radio at the Missouri State Fair earlier this year, Hoskins said he disagreed with the contention that hand-counting would make it take significantly longer for voters to know unofficial election results. Typically, voters can see results on Election Day within a few hours of polls closing.
“Would we maybe have to have some more volunteers in order to hand count those ballots? Yes, but we could start hand-counting those ballots the morning of Election Day, especially the absentees, and go in and be counting throughout the day, not just after the polls close at 7 p.m.,” Hoskins said. “We could also have different shifts. So people could have a shift maybe from 5 in the morning to 2 in the afternoon, and then another shift from 2 to 10.”
After hearing those comments, Stream said what Hoskins was suggesting would be practically impossible in St. Louis County. He said that election officials would need to pay people to count ballots — as opposed to expecting them to volunteer.
“And as I pointed out, 24 million marks on a ballot would have to be counted in St Louis County,” Stream said. “So that's not just something that can be done overnight or in a couple of hours or a couple of days or even a couple of weeks. The people want their results right away. And we have a good system.”
A national push
One of the biggest advocates of hand-counting ballots is Mike Lindell, the founder of MyPillow who has put forth a slew of unfounded claims about the 2020 election.
Even though Lindell is popular among Republicans, Stream said that he hasn’t found a single GOP local election official in Missouri who is in favor of doing away with vote tabulating machines.
“This is just an idea he has that I think is, frankly, purely political, to get elected in a Republican primary,” Stream said. “There's no basis whatsoever for him to believe this. And some people seem to think that this is going to solve a lot of problems, but it's not. In Missouri, we have a good system already in place that protects the vote of the people. And it's, hand-counting ballots will not make it any more accurate. It will not make it any more fast.”
When asked about his proposal to hand-count ballots, Phifer, Hoskins' opponent in the Nov. 5 election, said “it's irresponsible to foment that kind of doubt about our democracy when there is absolutely no evidence to back it up.”
Fey added that one of the reasons election officials started using vote counting machines was because hand-counting often resulted in inaccuracies. He also said hand-counting makes fraud more likely — and not less likely.
“In the 1950s there were these grand jury investigations in St Louis that had looked into irregularities around election results,” Fey said. “And they found that in the hand-counting, people were fudging the results in the hand count. And voting machines were seen as a way where they just couldn't arbitrarily change numbers and add extra tick marks and make errant marks on the ballot that would invalidate them. So, yeah, that's a real concern. The bigger concern with hand counting is just regular human error.”
“St. Louis on the Air” brings you the stories of St. Louis and the people who live, work and create in our region. The show is produced by Ulaa Kuziez, Miya Norfleet, Emily Woodbury, Danny Wicentowski, Elaine Cha and Alex Heuer. The audio engineer is Aaron Doerr and the production intern is Jada Jones.
