_fw.png)
Why do some towns hand count and some towns use electronic ballot counting devices?
Is that not creating two classes of voters?
Could that be considered discriminatory?
Where is the ACLU on this issue?
FEBRUARY 2022 NEWS FROM PRESIDENT TRUMP
Trump and Elon agree, computers should not be used in elections.
I WONDER IF AYOTTE WAS THERE?
Some of us tried to warn you about much of this back in 2021. We were defamed
NEWS FROM THEN
Casting doubt: Hampton selectman joins effort to remove NH voting machines
Patrick Cronin
Portsmouth Herald
HAMPTON — Petitions are circulating to get rid of all electronic voting tabulation machines in Hampton and in other cities and towns in New Hampshire. Those pushing the petitions say their goal is to ensure "integrity" in future elections.
Selectman Regina Barnes is behind the Hampton effort, saying it is being done in conjunction with the nonprofit political citizen group Marigold Coffee Club as part of its "Remove the Machines" campaign.
"This is actually a statewide effort," said Barnes, who is a team leader for the group in Hampton. "Marigold Coffee Club is doing it and in Hampton we are also doing a warrant article for Town Meeting."
A group of Hampton residents are working to gain enough signatures to remove election voting tabulation machines in town. The effort is part of a statewide initiative by the nonprofit political citizen group Marigold Coffee Club.
Barnes went before the town's Board of Selectmen last week requesting they call for a special Town Meeting to ask voters if they want to return to hand-counting paper ballots for all town, state and federal elections.
The board voted 4-1 Monday against it citing they needed more information. Selectmen Chairman Rusty Bridle noted a citizen requested special Town Meeting would require a petition signed by 5% of registered voters while a regular March Town Meeting petition would require 25 resident signatures for a question to be placed on the ballot.
Barnes, a Republican, said prior to the meeting the grassroots effort does not stem from former President Donald Trump's unproven claims of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election, which were rejected in court, nor from conspiracy theories regarding Dominion Voting Systems being susceptible to hacks.
The U.S. Department of Justice found no evidence of widespread voter fraud and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said it was "the most secure in American history."
Rather, Barnes said, it has to do with what occurred in Windham, New Hampshire, where a recount of an eight-person race for four state representative seats at the Nov. 3, 2020, election showed major discrepancies from what the machines reported on election night and the paper ballots that were later recounted by hand.
Democratic candidate Kristi St. Laurent, who finished behind the top four Republican candidates, filed for the recount after losing by 24 votes on Election Day. The hand-counted recount showed each of the four winning Republicans picking up about 300 votes and St. Laurent losing 99 votes, increasing her losing margin from just 24 votes to more than 400 votes.
What happened in Windham?
Windham, along with other cities and towns in N.H. that have vote counting machines, uses AccuVote-OS PC (Optical Scan Precinct Count) machines, which are the only ones allowed in the state and have been in use since the early 1990s.
A state-approved audit on Windham's ballot-counting machines and hand tabulations released in July 2021 revealed the cause of the discrepancy was a separate folding machine used to send out absentee ballots and not "partisan bias or a failed election."
The folding machine, the auditors Harri Hursti, Mark Lindeman and Philip Stark wrote, folded the ballots in the wrong place. Instead of folding the ballots on the score lines between vote targets as intended, it folded through vote bubbles in the state representative contest causing miscalculations when they were fed into the voting machines.
Recount: Auditors find no fraud in disputed Windham, New Hampshire election
'AccuVote machines are reliable'
David Scanlon, New Hampshire's deputy secretary of state, said in the three decades the state has been using the AccuVote machines, they have been reliable.
"As long as the voter properly marks the oval on the ballot, the machine will accurately read them," Scanlon said. "Where they have been issues in the past with large discrepancies, it's usually the result of human error."
He said the machines are less prone to hacks than newer technology as they are completely disconnected from the internet and the serial ports on the side of the devices have also been disabled so you can't plug anything into it.
"The only cord that comes out of it, that is of any use, is the power cord," Scanlon said
While the state has confidence in the AccuVote machines, the state Ballot Commission is currently looking at approving two new machines, one manufactured by Dominion Voting Systems and another by Election Systems & Software. The commission is meeting on Oct. 29 to discuss the matter.
Scanlon said the main reason new machines are being considered is AccuVote machines are no longer being manufactured.
"They're aging and they are not making parts for them anymore," Scanlon said.
Scanlon said the state has no position on whether cities and towns use the machines or not, noting a little less than half of the cities and towns in the Granite State still hand count votes.
"It's up to the town to decide whether they want to continue or go back to hand-counting," Scanlon said.
Hampton moderator: No issues with machines
Hampton Town Moderator Bob Casassa said he was unaware of the petition to remove the machines, but said he does not have concerns regarding their usage.
"We have not had any difficulties or problems with them during my time as moderator," said Casassa, who has overseen town elections for the last 17 years.
Casassa said what happened in Windham could have been avoided if the state required all absentee ballots be sent out in a large manila envelope and not folded.
"The folds make for a challenging processing situation but they haven't resulted in results not trustworthy in Hampton in my experience," Casassa said.
Scanlon said the state has looked into requiring absentee ballots be sent out in large envelopes but it would be at a significant cost and the post office said there would be delivery delays.
Hampton schools: Ranked among 'Best K-8 Schools' in NH
Casassa said if Hampton was to revert to hand counting, it would make for a "significant task" as well as a need for additional staffing, security and possibly a new voting location.
"We have eight voting machines in Hampton and for example in the March election, if 3,000 people came to vote which is pretty much the norm and we had seven sheets of paper, that's 21,000 pieces of paper that would have to be hand-counted," Cassasa said.
Casassa said there is already a mechanism in place to challenge the results of the machines and that is to request a recount, which by state law is done by hand count.
In 2020, there were 13 recounts in state representative races in New Hampshire and the only major discrepancy was in Windham.
'It's about integrity'
Barnes told selectmen that the AccuVote machines are no longer made and questioned their accuracy.
She quoted the president of LHS Associates, which is the state-approved contractor that services the machines. In a 2019 Concord Monitor article, Jeff Silvestro said the AccuVote operating system runs on Windows XP, which is no longer supported by Microsoft, leading to concerns about crashes and bugs.
LHS Associates is a vendor for Dominion Voting Systems, one of the new machines the state is looking into.
"When is the last time we had a full audit on the machines to make sure they are doing their job," Barnes said.
She also noted that AccuVote machines do not count "over-votes," which is when a voter selects more candidates than are to be elected, even if they put an X through one noting it was done in error. Those votes, she said, are only counted during a recount.
At the meeting, she also played a two-minute video of Democratic politicians questioning the accuracy of voter machines in 2016 that appears to have been put together by the website fundtheaudit.com, a website in support of raising funds to audit the 2020 presidential election results in Arizona.
What is the Marigold Coffee Club?
According to the Marigold Coffee Club website, the group's goal is for each city or town to present a petition to "politely" ask town leaders to remove voting machines to the town/city select board. If they reject the request, they would then call for a petition warrant article for a special election to have the voters decide.
One of its founders, according to Barnes, is Felisa Blazek of Windham.
The group's mission, which has chapters in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Maine and Vermont, is to provide "opportunities for people to sit down and enjoy coffee while facilitating, training, and educating civilians in ways to be prepared in the ever-changing political, economic, and environmental climates." According to its website, the group gets its name from the second choice of the U.S. national flower, the marigold, which is native to all 50 states "and capable of surviving all the diverse environments."
Petition will be on Hampton ballot
Barnes said she intends to continue gathering signatures for the Hampton petition.
She along with five others were at the gazebo in downtown Hampton, holding up signs which read "Sign here for election integrity" and "Truth has no agenda."
Barnes said she has already garnered enough signatures for the petition to appear on the March Town Meeting ballot.
Volunteer Linda McGrath, of Hampton, said for her, it's about having faith in the election system.
"For me, it was the issue in Windham," McGrath said. "The takeaway is that the machines are unreliable."
McGrath called the issue a bipartisan one.
Comments