A Republican election expert has strongly criticized a growing demand among some MAGA supporters to require hand counting of ballots in U.S.elections, describing the idea as impractical and highly inefficient.

Stephen Richer, former Maricopa County recorder and current fellow at the Cato Institute, argued that replacing machine tabulation with full hand counts would dramatically slow down election results, reduce accuracy, and significantly increase costs.

In a recent interview, Richer called the proposal “asinine in the extreme,” emphasizing that states with large and complex ballots, such as California, would be especially affected.

He noted that California voters often face ballots with more than 80 different contests, which would take enormous time to count manually across millions of votes, potentially delaying results for months.

Richer also addressed comparisons made by supporters of hand counting, who often point to countries like France as examples of successful manual tabulation.

He countered that such comparisons are misleading because France typically holds simpler elections with fewer ballot items, unlike the multi-race ballots common in many U.S.states.According to Richer, the scale and complexity of American elections make full hand counting unrealistic and far less efficient than current systems.

While rejecting hand counting as a general method, he emphasized that hand counts still play an important role in election audits, helping verify machine accuracy and maintain trust in results.

He also defended paper ballots, describing them as a valuable safeguard because they create a secure, verifiable record that can be audited and is resistant to hacking.

Overall, Richer argued that modern election systems should focus on improving efficiency and transparency rather than reverting to slower, more error-prone manual counting methods.