When the clock strikes 8 p.m. on November 5, in the town of New Vineyard, which boasts a population of about 700 residents in Franklin County, six dedicated election clerks will commence the meticulous process of counting votes by hand. Voters in New Vineyard will encounter 13 items on their ballots, consisting of eight candidates for county, state, and federal offices, along with five state referendum inquiries. Each selection requires conscientious tallying—carried out not just once, but twice.
To ensure accuracy, the clerks will work in pairs, typically comprised of one Democrat and one Republican. Each team will methodically count groups of 50 ballots, simultaneously reviewing and vocally affirming their findings—“State Senate, Jane Doe; Question 1, Yes”—while recording the voter’s choice on their respective tally sheets. Once a batch is completed, the clerks will compare their sheets, and if discrepancies arise, they must recheck the votes for the item in question. Once resolutions are achieved, the clerks will sign the certification sheets, with one being submitted to the warden and the other archived with the ballots.
Michelle Beedy, the clerk of New Vineyard, has expressed interest in acquiring voting machinery, such as the hand-fed optical scanners that most municipalities in Maine rely upon for ballot counting. She believes that utilizing such equipment would streamline the counting process significantly: “It just would make counting a lot easier. There’s a lot to counting those ballots,” Beedy stated. However, the town remains attached to its customs, continuing the tradition of using a classic wooden ballot box during elections.
New Vineyard is among 150 towns in Maine that hand count ballots—representing roughly a third of all voting jurisdictions within the state—each with fewer than 750 registered voters. The average registered voter count in these communities is a mere 251. Unlike the majority of the United States, where elections predominantly operate at the county level, Maine’s system is unique in that it assigns election management to municipalities. Only about half of a percent of voters nationally utilize exclusively hand counting methods, whereas in Maine, around 4 percent of registered voters, or approximately 37,000 individuals, are involved in hand counting.
It’s important to note that not all voters in Maine vote in their registered locations, particularly in unorganized territories. For instance, the 241 registered voters from Connor Township in Aroostook County will travel to Caribou for the upcoming election.
The remaining 330 cities and towns in Maine typically employ hand-fed optical scanners, which efficiently scan hand-marked paper ballots and electronically compile the results, storing the data on a memory stick. In cases wherein a ballot may be inaccurately filled out, such as selecting too many candidates for one race, the system will flag the issue, allowing voters the opportunity to correct their ballots.
Since 2012, Maine has engaged with Election Systems & Software, the vendor supplying the optical scanners. According to Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, municipalities can request a DS200 ballot scanner without incurring expenses. Since the agreement commenced, the prevalence of municipalities opting for hand counting has notably decreased: in 2012, around a third of the towns used these scanners, compared to the rest which relied on hand counting.
More than 2,300 voting jurisdictions spanning 39 states and territories, including Maine, utilize this specific model of ballot scanning device, as reported by Verified Voting, an organization dedicated to promoting transparency in election technologies. Maine law empowers localities to determine their voting tabulation processes, and while Bellows highly recommends larger municipalities take advantage of such technology, she acknowledges that smaller communities like New Vineyard may prefer manual counting to ensure thoroughness.
Research indicates that hand counting can introduce a higher likelihood of human errors, and the process takes significantly longer than machine counting. A peer-reviewed analysis in the Election Law Journal highlighted that vote tallies produced by scanning devices generally yield greater accuracy than those counted by hand. Further studies from neighboring states have underscored this discrepancy, presenting evidence of elevated error rates with hand counting versus machine-based systems.
Despite the statistical advantages, Bellows recognizes the inclination of smaller towns to adhere to traditional counting methods, understanding the emphasis on precision and care in these processes. Meanwhile, in several states, GOP lawmakers have rallied for a return to hand counting, basing their campaigns on unfounded theories of voting irregularities linked to tabulation devices. Notably, efforts in New Hampshire to eliminate voting machines resulted in a minimal victory for that cause, as only a small town chose to remove its machines.
Pam Smith, the president of Verified Voting, pointed out that the proportion of jurisdictions abandoning optical scanners for manual counting remains negligible nationwide. Moreover, she noted that in New Hampshire, this initiative largely failed, with only one small town voting for a ban. As for Maine, the DS200 optical scanners are recognized for their reliability and security, particularly since all regions, regardless of their counting method, utilize hand-marked paper ballots, ensuring a verifiable paper trail for audits and recounts.
Looking toward the upcoming election, nearly all voters in the U.S. will have a paper record of their cast votes, further enhanced by machines that provide voters the opportunity to check and confirm their choices. All Maine jurisdictions also maintain ballot-marking devices designed for disabled individuals, enabling them to vote independently and confidentially while producing printed ballots for tabulation.
Smith cautioned that the efficacy of hand counting relies heavily on jurisdiction size; as populations grow, it becomes increasingly challenging to manage accurate and timely manual counts. Bellows echoed these concerns, noting that Mainers expect results on election night, a goal that scanning technology helps achieve efficiently.
For New Vineyard, Beedy will assign two clerks to manage absentee ballots throughout the day, and four additional clerks will count the votes cast on election day once polls close. The clerks will be compensated at the minimum wage of $14.15 per hour, with Beedy and the election warden remaining on site during the proceedings. The town, with approximately 530 registered voters, anticipates expenditures around $700 solely for the six clerks, with the counting process expected to last well past 11 p.m. if all occurs smoothly.
“We’re responsible for every single ballot,” Beedy emphasized. “You miss one number and your whole tally sheet is off. So you could be back trying to find one ballot out of 800.”
With counting stretched late into the night, the clerks aim to ensure every vote is accurately tallied and reported.