Big Win for the Hand Count Movement!
While clearly not wanting to endorse hand counting, the Director of Elections in St Charles, Missouri, Kurt Bahr, in an email to the County Council, spectacularly validated it anyway!
Bahr’s Ironic Advocacy of Hand Counting
Cheers to Kurt Bahr!
Not only did the Director of Elections understand the importance of taking time away from his county duties to travel to Jefferson City to attend the Hand Count Demo hosted by the Secretary of State, but he stayed for about 3 of the 4 hours.
Bahr was observed watching the hand count team as they demonstrated the hand count method. He spoke with election judges who hand-counted the 2023 municipal election in Osage County. He appeared attentive to the informational materials that were made available to attendees. And, based on the comments in his email, Bahr later visited this website to learn more about hand counting, taking screenshots of our costs estimates for St Charles County, which he shared with the council members.
Validation that Hand Counting Saves Money
“Their math” shows “a cost of $287,520” for election judges for the November election.
In late 2023, Kurt Bahr told the County Council that it would cost $1.3 million to hand count the three upcoming 2024 elections, with $772,596 of that being for the presidential election. A little over a year later, after Bahr reviewed and downloaded our estimates for hand count costs, he reduced his estimate to our figure: $287,520 for the presidential.
We’ll take that to mean that he trusts our calculations, so we are going to help the Elections Director by correcting his math on the costs of using voting machines. Our approach is based on the cost of voting machines being more than just the annual license fee.
Let’s Save St Charles County $68,000 per year (minimum)
What a savings! This is covered in details in two other posts: Let’s Save St Charles County $68,000 on Elections Every Year, and Proof Hand Counting Costs Less than Machines.
Using a report of county council-approved election purchases for 2010-2023, we were able to calculate a more accurate voting machine cost. We used the council-approved figures from the past 11 years and only costs that would be eliminated by hand-counting, plus we pro-rated the original purchase of the machines, and included two recent approvals in 2025.
Keep in mind, our voting machine cost figure does NOT include costs from the regular elections budget since those costs do not require council approval. When those are accounted for, our estimate for machines will increase.
Next, using the Hand Count Estimator tool, we calculated hand count labor costs for 4 election types: municipal, primaries, mid-terms, and general presidential. These are based on historical voter turnout data. Then we took the 4-year election cycle of 2024-2027 and the types of elections that will occur in those years, and added the appropriate labor cost for each election. Total labor in the 4-year period is $837,600, which we divided by 4 to get an annual amount.
Voilà!
There you have it! The difference between the two annual figures for voting machine costs vs hand count labor is the minimum savings each year if the St Charles County goes to hand counting.
Who Gets the Money?
The $837,600 labor costs for hand counting over a 4-year period is paid to election judges — residents of St Charles County — who hopefully spend it in the county.
That can’t be said about taxpayer money spent on voting machines. According to Senators Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar, money paid for voting machines goes to private equity firms. Read about it here: Warren, Klobuchar Investigate Vulnerabilities and Shortcomings of Election Tech Industry.
Also read Finding: Hand Counting Saves Money
Validation of our Hand Count Estimator Tool
Oops. We didn’t actually create worksheets for every Missouri county, just St Charles and Osage. But we are honored that, not only did the Director of Elections come to this website to check out the Hand Count Estimator tool, but he quotes the results from the tool in his email to council members.
The screenshots the Director inserted into the email show the results exactly as they are in our sample — no changes. That means that, if the Director reviewed the calculations before he sent them to the County Council, he found no errors (which we believe is the case). Another extraordinary endorsement from an election official.
View the updated Hand Count Estimator tool for St Charles County 2024
Validation of Plenty of People to Hand Count
That’s a lot of people — or is it? Almost any registered voter is eligible to be an election judge (and hand counters are election judges). St Charles used 1,208 judges in November, which is 0.4% of registered voters. If they have to increase that by 200%, they need 0.8% of all registered voters. Not even a full 1%.
More good news — for municipal elections, which occur annually, St Charles only needs 632 counters, or 0.2%. The presidential elections, every four years, give at least three years to recruit and build up to that whopping 0.8%.
Check out Finding: Plenty of People to Hand Count Because We are Re-Training
Validation of Election Day Results
What a bonus for us to have an Elections Director time the hand counters, as Kurt Bahr did. The counting team was using a long, 2-sided ballot with 24 races, and completing them in the range of one minute — according to Bahr. Superb!
Our estimate for the hand count process we call the Missouri Method, is between 50 to 100 ballots counted per hour. The Director of Elections verified that ballots were being counted around the 1-minute mark, which puts the demo team in the 50-60 ballots per hour range.
See more at Finding: Election Day or Same Day Results
Validation of our Training Process, especially Voter Intent
Bahr thought we were counting “perfect ballots without overvotes or random markings.” He was incorrect, but we appreciate him bringing this up.
In our Train the Trainers program, we spend a lot of time talking about voter intent and the duty of election judges who are counting ballots to make decisions about intent. The screenshots below are some examples used in training. We believe humans are better suited to judge voter intent than voting machines. (And are machines really counting those votes?)
Read Finding: Hand Counting is a Better Tool for Determining Voter Intent
Additionally, the ballots used in training are not “perfect.” The Library has 20 sets of practice ballots with 25 ballots each. Every set contains ballots with issues — not just overvotes — but markings like those in the screenshots, write-in issues, missing initials of election judges, and more!
We love that Kurt Bahr called this out as an important issue. It’s a thunderous affirmation of our process!
Bahr has Blatantly Championed Hand Counting
Albeit unintentionally, but I almost feel like Kurt Bahr should be added to the Hand Count Champions page.
When I saw Kurt Bahr’s email, I was thrilled that he did not resort to the tired, old myths about hand counting. The primary concern Bahr voiced to the county council, and upon which he was basing his don’t ‘entertain the idea of hand counting’ conclusion, was about costs.
But what Bahr didn’t say after observing the hand count process and visiting this website illustrates additional endorsements.
Which Myths did Bahr Leave Out?
Check out: Finding: Incremental Auditing Assures Accuracy, Finding: Hand Counting Ensures More Transparency and Better Security, Finding: Works in Any County, Any Size
Channeling Mike Lindell
In 2021, on one of Mike Lindell’s first visits to Missouri to discuss election integrity, he met Kurt Bahr who attended the meeting. Lindell told Bahr that the machines were a risk and he should get rid of them. It seems nearly 4 years later, Bahr is finally beginning to understand the benefits of hand counting which means, of course, Mike was Right!
Tags: costs ▪ Hand Count Estimator ▪ Kurt Bahr ▪ Missouri ▪ St Charles County ▪ voting machines
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Your Vote Counts, so COUNT YOUR VOTE!
