Click the icon in the upper-right corner to download the PDF
When the Director of Elections in St. Charles County, Missouri, Kurt Bahr, presented an estimate on December 4, 2023, to the County Council of $1.3 Million to hand count the three upcoming elections in 2024, one Councilman asked me to review and respond. See Inflated Hand Count Estimate, St. Charles County MO to view the Director of Elections’ spreadsheet.
Debunking the Myth
My initial approach to this was to recreate Bahr’s spreadsheet. But I was unable to find any variation of formulas that would yield the same results.
That roadblock set me on the path to start from scratch with a blank Excel worksheet. The result of my work showed that an accurate estimate for counting the three elections in 2024 in St Charles County would be $581,500, not $1,306,785 — about $722,000 less than Bahr’s estimate.
This PDF (click the icon in the upper right) is the presentation I gave to the St Charles County Council on December 18, 2023. Unfortunately, like many government entities like this, the elected officials do not appear interested in hearing from the public and my information fell on deaf ears (other than Councilman Joe Brazil, who expressed gratitude for my efforts).
The benefit of this project, though, was that I realized the spreadsheet I had created for St. Charles could become a tool for use by any other jurisdiction in the country to get accurate estimates for hand counting. The Hand Count Estimator Tool was born!
Did Kurt Bahr Change His Mind About His Hand Count Estimate?
Not that I know of in 2023 or 2024, but read Let’s Save St Charles County $68,000 on Elections Every Year for news about Kurt Bahr in 2025.
