Yup! I did this in the previous Canadian Federal election. Open the box, show every ballot to the people gathered around, report my total, everyone agrees that was the total they got, call it in. Box and my tally gets sealed up and mailed to HQ, and my results were in about an hour after polls closed. Some people told me as I was handing them their ballot they they didn't trust the voting machines and I got to be like "well, good news! I'm the voting machine! Let me tell you exactly how your vote is going to get counted"

Anyway, I heard this past election is the past to use this system and they're moving to electronic vote counting next time 😅

I work in tech and actually loved the transparency and accountability of the paper ballot system.

Now! The electronic system will still be paper ballots, it's just that those ballots pass through a scanner on their way into the ballot box that does the counting, so it's basically the same system, it's just that we have the tally as soon as the polls close.

But I liked the system where one person, me, was responsible for the number and has stewardship of the whole process. In theory someone should count the ballots anyway to check the number the counting machine got, but if it's me then what's the benefit of the machine if I'm going to count anyway, but if it's a "maybe we'll check some of them" process at HQ then we lose the local visibility and responsibility.

I think the paper worked pretty okay. The slowest part of the process for voters is handing out ballots and marking registered voters off the register, and not the counting, and the counting machine doesn't change that part...