There's only one way votes should be counted.

[hipeter924]

Make everyone sign an affidavit stating they are a citizen of the United States and to their knowledge are eligible to vote, when they submit their ballot.

Then match up the list of those who voted with those that are citizens eligible to vote (and sue the asses of non-citizens for perjury if necessary).

Also send voters a confirmation of their vote upon request, stating who they voted for.

Together those measures would create more paperwork, but would decrease the amount of voter fraud without requiring voter ID's (which can be forged).

Any bright ideas on how the votes should be counted? No urge to bring more integrity and transparency to that process? Who gets to do the checking and rejecting and who is watching them? It is during that brief period when the ballots are in the hands of election officials when elections are stolen. A certain number of election workers are there to cheat if they can, it's human nature, I feel that these people have pulled off more coups in resent years than anyone would like to believe. If you are really concerned with election integrity then abandon the ID issue and look at the people who actually handle the ballot box.

The issue is after the votes are counted or before they are counted, as people can just show up and try to vote, or problems can take place with the voting machine or with the paper ballots: How Votes are Counted On Election Day

Ballot boxes are sealed and sent to the counting facility
As soon as the last voter has voted, the election judge at each polling place sends the sealed ballot boxes to a central vote counting facility. This is usually a government office, like a city hall or county courthouse. Where computerized voting machines are used, the election judge will send the media on which the votes are recorded to the counting facility. The ballot boxes or computer media are usually transported to the counting facility by sworn law enforcement officers.

Ballots arrive at the counting facility
At the central counting facility, certified observers from the political parties or candidates watch the actual vote counting to make sure the count is fair.

 

[Siete]

With the end of the 2012 presidential election, a number of analysts are busily analyzing Obama’s victory.
There’s just one problem with all this: all the votes haven’t been counted yet. The nation is still counting millions of absentees and provisionals. California alone has, as of this writing, two million votes to count. Throughout the nation, there are probably still around five million votes left to count.
There’s a lot of analysis being done that’s flawed since the results aren’t complete. Both sides of the political spectrum are guilty of this.
For instance, Nate Silver wrote an article arguing that Democrats had an electoral college advantage. The argument was that Obama’s popular margin was less than his victory in swing states such as Virginia and Colorado, which meant that the electoral college favored Democrats.
At the time Obama was leading by 2.5%. Today he is leading by 2.8%, and his margin will only go up. That is because the Democratic-heavy West Coast still has several million uncounted votes.

voter fraud !