Germany hand counts their ballots, results in quickly

[Igel]

42. What you call it can matter.

If it's a "miscount," then recounting by itself is the fix.

If it's "misplaced ballots", then recounting over and over until the paper itself disintegrates won't catch the problem because it's not an erroneous count but completing the initial count that's the problem.

Mislabeling the problem leads to proposing the wrong solution and results from mis-identifying the problem. When I worked polls in west New York state it was clear that we counted the votes by race at our polling place, 1 (R) and 1 (D) doing the reading out of the machine's results and another set of 1 (R) and 1 (D) writing them down. Each set of partisans verified that the read-out was correct and the jotting down was correct. We sealed the equipment--again, with a partisan balance between sealers and witnesses. One copy of the prelim results was posted on the polling place door before we left that night, another was hand carried to the elections office that night. The machines were transported to the office and the official audit was taken--again, multiple people verifying the accuracy of the read-out and of the transcription; the precinct-level results from the official audit were compared with the prelim results. Any discrepancy had to be accounted for--they'd first look at the poll books (this was 20 years back) to verify that the number of people who voted was correct per the machines, then they'd contact the poll workers at issue to resolve discrepancies.

It was hard for an erroneous number to slip through. That's the checks and audits. Multiple redundancies. Recounts ... They're to catch initial counting errors, nothing more.