Hampton-A petition calling for the cancellation of all electronic voting tabulation machines in Hampton and other towns in New Hampshire is circulating. Those who promote the petition say that their goal is to ensure the "integrity" of future elections.

Selectman Regina Barnes, who is behind the Hampton project, said it was done in collaboration with the non-profit political citizenship organization Marigold Coffee Club as part of its "remove the machine" campaign. 

"This is actually a statewide effort," said Barnes, the team leader of the team at Hampton. "The Marigold Coffee Club is doing this, and in Hampton, we are also doing authorization articles for the town meeting." 

Barnes asked them to convene a special town meeting in front of the town’s election committee last week, asking voters whether they would be willing to resume manual counting of paper votes in all town, state, and federal elections. 

The board voted 4 to 1 against it on Monday, on the grounds that they needed more information. Rusty Bridle, Chairman of Selectmen, pointed out that the special town meeting required by citizens requires 5% of registered voters to sign a petition, while the regular March town meeting petition requires 25 residents to sign before the question can be placed on the ballot. 

Republican Barnes said before the meeting that the grassroots efforts did not stem from former President Donald Trump’s unconfirmed allegations of voter fraud that were widespread in the 2020 election. These allegations were rejected in court, nor did they stem from Conspiracy theories that the Dominion voting system is vulnerable to hacking. 

Defamation case: Dominion sues OAN, Newsmax, and former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne over voter fraud allegations, demanding $1.6 billion in damages

The U.S. Department of Justice found no evidence of widespread voter fraud, which the U.S. Department of Homeland Security described as "the safest in U.S. history."

Instead, Barnes said, this is related to what happened in Wyndham, New Hampshire, where the eight-person election for the four state representative seats recounted on November 3, 2020 and the machine-reported results were significantly different. Paper ballots recounted by Yehe later by hand.

Democratic candidate Christie Saint Laurent ranked behind the top four Republican candidates and applied for a recount after losing 24 votes on election day. The manual recount of votes showed that the four winning Republicans each received about 300 votes, and Saint Laurent lost 99 votes, increasing her loss from only 24 votes to more than 400 votes.

Wyndham and other towns in New Hampshire that have ticket counters use the AccuVote-OS PC (optical scanning constituency counting) machine, which is the only machine allowed in the state and has been in use since the early 1990s.  

A state-approved audit of Wyndham ticket counters and watches issued in July 2021 revealed that the reason for the discrepancy was a separate folding machine used to send absentee ballots, rather than "partisan bias or election failure." . 

The auditors Harry Hesty, Mark Lindeman and Philip Stark wrote that the folding machine folded the ballot in the wrong position. It did not fold the votes on the score line between the voting goals as expected, but folds the voting bubbles in the state representative contest, resulting in calculation errors when entering them into the voting machine.  

Recount: Auditors found no fraud in controversial Wyndham New Hampshire election

New Hampshire Deputy Secretary of State David Scanlon (David Scanlon) said that the state has been using AccuVote machines for the past three decades and they have been reliable.

"As long as voters correctly mark the ovals on the ballot, the machine will accurately read them," Scanlon said. "They have had big differences in the past, and this is usually the result of human error." 

He said that compared to the new technology, these machines are less susceptible to hacker attacks because they are completely disconnected from the Internet and the serial port on the side of the device is disabled, so you can't plug in anything. 

Scanlon said: "The only wire coming out of it, the power cord, is of any use."

Although the state has full confidence in the AccuVote machine, the state voting committee is currently considering approving two new machines, one manufactured by Dominion Voting Systems and the other manufactured by Election Systems & Software. The committee will meet on October 29 to discuss the matter. 

Scanlon stated that the main reason it is considering using new machines is that AccuVote machines are no longer being produced.

"They are aging, and they no longer make parts for them," Scanlon said. 

Scanlon said the state has no position on whether towns use these machines, noting that less than half of the towns in Granite State are still counting their votes. 

Scanlon said: "It's up to the town to decide whether they want to continue or resume manual counting."

The host of Hampton Town, Bob Casasa, said he was not aware of the petition to remove the machines, but said he was not worried about their use. 

“During my tenure as the host, we did not encounter any difficulties or problems,” said Casasa, who has been overseeing elections in towns and cities for the past 17 years. 

Casasa said that if the state government required all absentee ballots to be packed in a Metro Manila envelope instead of folded, what happened to Wyndham could have been avoided.  

Casasa said: "Folds created a challenging processing situation, but in my experience, they did not cause Hampton's results to be untrustworthy." 

Scanlon said the state has considered asking for absentee ballots to be mailed in large envelopes, but the cost of doing so is high, and the post office said it would delay delivery.  

Hampton Schools: Ranked in the "Best K-8 Schools" in New Hampshire

Casasa said that if Hampton were to resume manual counting, it would be a "significant task" and would require additional staffing, security and possible new voting locations.  

"We have eight voting machines in Hampton. For example, in the March election, if 3,000 people vote, it is almost the norm, and we have seven sheets, that is, 21,000 sheets must be counted by hand," Casasa said. 

Casasa said that there is already a mechanism to question the results of the machine, which is to request a recount, which is manually counted according to state law. 

In 2020, there were 13 recounts in New Hampshire’s state representative elections. The only major difference occurred in Wyndham. 

Barnes told the selector that the AccuVote machine was no longer manufactured and questioned its accuracy. 

She quoted the president of LHS Associates, which is a state-approved contractor for machinery. In a 2019 Concord Monitor article, Jeff Silvestro stated that the AccuVote operating system runs on Windows XP, which Microsoft no longer supports, causing people to worry about crashes and errors. 

LHS Associates is a supplier of Dominion Voting Systems, which is one of the new machines being studied in the state. 

"When was the last time we conducted a full audit of the machines to make sure they were working properly," 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. Calculated when the votes are recounted. 

At the meeting, she also played a two-minute video of Democratic politicians questioning the accuracy of voter machines in 2016. The video appeared to be produced by fundtheaudit.com, a website that supports fund-raising audits for the 2020 presidential election. The result is in Arizona. 

According to the Marigold Coffee Club website, the organization’s goal is for each city or town to submit a petition "politely" asking town leaders to move the voting machine to the town/city selection committee. If they refuse the request, they will ask for a petition essay for the special election to allow the voters to make a decision.

According to Barnes, one of its founders was Felisa Blazek of Windham.

The organization has chapters in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Maine, and Vermont. Its mission is to "provide opportunities for people to sit down and enjoy coffee, while promoting, training, and educating civilians so that they can be in the changing political and economic And environmental climate.” According to its website, the group’s name comes from the second choice of the national flower of the United States. Marigolds are native to all 50 states and “can survive in all different environments”.

Barnes said she intends to continue collecting signatures for the Hamptons petition. 

She and five other people were in a pavilion in downtown Hampton, holding signs that read "Sign here to ensure election integrity" and "The truth has no agenda." 

Barnes said she has received enough signatures for the petition to appear on the ballots at the March Town Conference.

Hampton volunteer Linda McGrath told her that it was about confidence in the electoral system. 

"For me, this is Wyndham's problem," McGrath said. "The conclusion is that these machines are unreliable." 

McGrath called this issue a bipartisan issue. 

Voters guide Portsmouth's 2021 general election: when, where and who is on the ballot

"I don't think anyone has confidence in (the election)," McGrath said. "I think those who said there was no cheating in the (2020) elections sang different tunes in the Bush vs. Gore match and wanted to count every unresolved Chad." 

McGrath said that manual counting will bring the election back to integrity and ensure that every vote is counted.

"It's a way to come together as a town," McGrath said. "We can sit together, we can count the votes, and shake hands and pat the winner's back at the end of the day."