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After reports of inconsistencies in Iowa vote totals, I'm wondering whether, given that a) transparency in reporting results (e.g. reporting results of all 3 types of counts in Iowa) makes errors more visible, but...https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/06/upshot/iowa-caucuses-errors-results.html …
b) transparency is generally good, both to bolster trust in process and because it allows for errors to be corrected, and c) errors are more likely with manual counting/paper ballots etc, but d) public errors undermine trust in the process, and...
e) the election tech we have so far is bad and manual counting/paper ballots might still be the best way to do things... basically, the only way to square transparency & reliability in reporting with a slow and error-prone process is to not report results quickly.
In other words, if we can only have two out of [speed, reliability, transparency], it seems to me that it's much preferable to sacrifice speed than transparency or reliability. If it takes a week to validate results such that they can be reported, that seems worth it.
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