When we recently learned about a mandatory hand count of all mail-in ballots in a rural Arizona county, I immediately wondered if this was an idea that was going to spread more widely around the country. The horrified reaction to the news by Democrats and their mainstream media stenographers seemed to be rather informative, at least to me. Well, there’s going to be more of that going on this week. Nye County, Nevada, a sparsely populated area once famous for its silver mines, was just cleared by the state supreme court to begin hand counting all of the mail-in ballots that are received, and they will be doing it prior to the election, not after the polls are closed on November 8th. Various precautions are being put in place to ensure that the early voting results don’t leak out in advance, but that isn’t calming down the progressives who are acting as if the end of the world is upon us. (Associated Press)

A county in Nevada is scheduled to start an unprecedented hand count of its midterm ballots Wednesday, a process fueled by voting machine conspiracy theories that raises concerns about early results being leaked ahead of Election Day.

Nye County, a scrub brush-dotted old silver mining region about halfway between Las Vegas and Reno, got clearance for the count from the state supreme court last week. The approval came with conditions that it had to take numerous steps to prevent early vote tallies in any race from being reported publicly.

Nevada is home to one of the most closely watched U.S. Senate races in the country, as well as high-stakes contests for governor and the office that oversees elections.

If you click through to the linked Associated Press report you’ll quickly get a feel for how their reporters are treating this news. They begin in the article’s title, referring to the process as a “conspiracy-inspired ballot hand count.” Their remaining hopes seem to rest with the office of the Nevada Secretary of State who could still cancel the count if the county hasn’t met the stringent security requirements set forth by the court to prevent any early release of the numbers.

Most of the court’s concerns seem to have been addressed, however. The original plan had called for the hand-counting process to be live-streamed online. But that raised the possibility that online viewers might be able to ferret out the selections made on the early ballots and determine (and presumably publish) the totals, so the streaming idea was scrapped. Also, the people doing the counting and the election observers who oversee the process will be broken up into between four and six different rooms. This is being done to prevent any one individual from knowing the total number of votes for each candidate.

On top of that, everyone participating in the process will be required to sign an agreement stating that they will not release any vote totals they may become aware of until after the election is over. Noncompliance would presumably result in potential charges against them for doing so.

I still find it difficult to grasp why people are freaking out over this. When did it become a “bad idea” to have actual human beings sit down and count all of the ballots cast in an election? The whole purpose of these exercises is to assuage the concerns some voters are feeling about the accuracy and integrity of the machine voting systems that are being used.

Whether the machines are flawed or operating 100% cleanly really no longer matters at this point. The question has been raised and it needs to be addressed. After performing a hand count, if the tally matches (or is at least reasonably close to) the results spit out by the machines, then great! The system works and people can feel better about the veracity of the results. If the results are significantly different, then a serious problem will have been identified and corrective action can be taken, along with a thorough investigation into how and why the system failed.

It’s really a win-win scenario when you think about it that way. But the fact that the debate is taking place should leave us with questions about the people trying to prevent the hand count. Who would be opposed to such a publicly verifiable process unless they believe there is something going on under the covers that they would prefer to remain hidden?