Just read an article about voting in France.

[Midnight Writer]

All paper ballots.

Votes are counted in a room full of observers.

A counter checks the ballot in front of everybody, then holds it up and announces the result. It is then passed to another counter, who can either confirm or challenge the result, then again announces his decision. The ballot then goes to either be tallied or, if challenged, examined by another counter.

Each of these steps can be watched by observers, and they can watch the tallies as they occur to ensure everything is copacetic.

This sounds time consuming, but most elections announce official results the same day.

In my opinion, this "old school" approach seems like it would really cut down on fraud, or even the appearance of fraud.

P.S. This was from an interview about twenty years ago. I cannot vouch for its veracity.

[LisaL]

1. A lot of people seem to be concerned we won't know results on the day of the election.

If we were to manually count the ballots it would take forever.
There is also more than one race on the ballot.
I don't know how they manage to finish counting the same day.

[msongs]

2. maybe they have many small population precincts where counting is faster nt

[drray23]

4. it would not take forever. all it takes is organization.

Remember, its divided up in precincts. Of course, they vary widely in size. However, with enough people you can count all the ballots by hand. its still done that way in France in a country of nearly 70 millions with much higher turnout than the United States. Granted there are more people here but we also have more precincts and more election officials who could count. Its not that impossible to scale up.

[DFW]

3. It's different in every country, and not always smooth

About 30 years ago, my wife went to the local polling place here (German Rheinland) to cast her vote. The local polling place checked her name, and said she couldn't vote. She asked why not? They said because her official residence was in München (Munich). München is in Bavaria at the other end of Germany. She said that not only was her residence NOT in München, but she had only been there a couple of times in her life, and never for more than a day or two.

She was told that their computer said she lived in München, so she lived in München, and couldn't vote. She got an idea, and gave them the names of our two daughters, both still under the age of ten at the time, and asked them to see if they were listed as living here at our address in our Rheinland town. Yes, they were listed as living here. She said OK, she would call the police and either get herself arrested for child abandonment or them arrested for not letting her vote. They let her vote. Provisionally, but it was allowed. The next day, she went to the city hall to ask WTF? They said that somehow a computer had moved her to München. She said, well cancel it, as she had never lived there, and certainly had not moved there abandoning our two girls on their own (my residence was still Dallas then). There were INCAPABLE of canceling her residence in München, but at least able to move her "back."

Bureaucrats and computers are not always compatible, which I why we maintain to this day that elections and computers are NEVER compatible.

[SheltieLover]

5. What a concept!

Perhaps they don't want a russian stooge in office!

[frazzled]

6. Their elections have only one office on the ballot

Well, not all, but the presidential election and the National Assembly election.

In all elections where there is a single official to be elected for a given area, including the two major national elections (the election of the President of the Republic and the election of the members of the National Assembly), two-round runoff voting is used.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_France

Our presidential elections also have races for House and sometimes Senate, state offices, judicial races (where I live there are always around 50), and ballot questions.

If you just have to count one race, this is probably possible to do, precinct by precinct. Counting 15, 20, or up to 60 different races, it’s not practical.