Re:2000 election (Score 1)

Hand-counting ballots doesn't scale worth a damn. Imagine if you had to find 20-50 times the number of people to count your ballots. It's a non-trivial operation.

Au contraire, mon capitan. Counting ballots is always something that has to be done locally. You need x people to count y votes, so the US may need a few people more than .au, but they do not need more people counting per vote.

Here in .de we have approx. 80 million. Let's say 80% of that are of voting age so they have the right to vote (don't have to register, can only be stripped of that right in extreme cases if at all AFAIK). Makes 64 millions. Let's say we have a real low number of people voting, just 50%. Makes 32 millions of votes. And? Votes are usually counted by midnight. And we do count pen marked paper votes by hand. There has to be consens about dubious votes before counting is done. Recounts? No problem. The papers are still there. Rarely done however.

Only on local votes counting usually takes a bit longer, because there you can spread maybe 60 votes over a few times that number of candidates and may or may not give more than one to one candidate and you don't even have to give all votes but may use a 'rest of votes to that party'-Option.