NH towns reject effort to ban vote counting machines
NEWINGTON – Voters at town meetings in Newington and Stratham joined eight other New Hampshire towns Saturday in rejecting a measure that would have banned voting machines in their elections. During Newington’s Town Meeting, town moderator Jack O’Reilly spoke against the article, saying the machines meet stringent federal standards and they are much more accurate than hand counting.
“If there’s a discrepancy, I have to investigate where the error was,” he said. ”100% of the time it’s in my hand counting, not in the machines.”
Douglas Wilson of Greenland asked permission to speak at the meeting in support of the measure, claiming there is a “risk that there is no control” over the devices when the voting machine travels between the town clerk’s office and LHS Associates, the Salem-based vendor that sells and services the machines. O’Reilly said that the machine never leaves the town hall.
Emily Savinelli, a Newington resident, said the town is just doing what the state requires.
“I don’t think this is an issue in town, and I don’t think this was brought by a resident in town,” she said.
The initiative was part of a larger effort by conservative groups in the state who got the proposed article on the warrant in at least 23 towns across New Hampshire. However, it has failed in almost all of the towns it has been voted on in so far, signaling voters across the state are rejecting the non-fact-based claim voting machines are inaccurate and susceptible to being hacked.
What was Article 15 in Newington and Stratham?
Article 15 on Newington’s town warrant asked voters if “all voting shall be by paper ballot and all ballots shall be hand counted,” rather than counted by electronic voting machines.
The article got on the ballot through petition, meeting the requirement to put a warrant forward at a Town Meeting. However, Newington Selectman Christian Wayss said the town's Board of Selectmen did not get briefed by the residents who wanted to put this forward.
“We chose not to recommend this because, we never heard a reason as to why this process needed to change and we have the utmost respect and confidence in our election officials and the process as it stands,” said Wayss.
At the town meeting, the article failed 85-11, according to the town selectmen's office.
Stratham's article 15 also asked for a voting machine ban. Town Clerk Deb Bakie said a group of about 30 residents brought the petition article forward on Feb. 5, one day before the deadline.
Bakie said she was so nervous about the possibility of the article passing she couldn't sleep.
"We need to keep them," she said about the vote-counting machines. "By the end of the night, my team is so tired that we have a difficult time just marrying up the ballots and the write-ins and everything and getting the correct number to match the actual tape on the machine."
In the lead-up to the election, opponents of the article put up signs that encouraged residents to vote no on article 15. Proponents passed out business cards, flyers and mailers. Bakie said some people reported even being approached in Market Basket with materials in favor of the article, and a digital signboard truck drove through town.
There were 426 voters who attended the town meeting, which Bakie said is the largest turnout she has seen. Residents spoke in favor and against the article, and it was ultimately voted down 381-41.
"I think that voters in New Hampshire are recognizing that our ballot machines, our ballot tabulators, correctly tabulate votes and that elections are being accurately reported," said Patty Lovejoy, New Hampshire's senior deputy secretary of state who formerly served as a state representative from Stratham. She said she was pleased with the outcome as well as how many people came out to vote.
"I know that they 100% believe in us and the job that we do, and that they trust the machine," said Bakie, who was "very relieved . ... We have not had an issue here in Stratham at all of anything happening."
How did these bans get on town warrants?
The effort to ban voting machines in New Hampshire was led by New Hampshire Patriot Hub, which describes themselves as “a group of passionate patriots.” They are a conservative and faith-oriented group who say they are focused on freedom and want to “take back NH.”
On Jan. 26, the group's members announced their effort to remove electronic ballot counting devices from 55 towns in New Hampshire by asking voters in each town to sign a petition to add a warrant article to their ballot to remove electronic ballot counting devices.
In New Hampshire, petitions for warrant articles only need 25 signatures to qualify for the ballot. The group was successful in gathering petitions in at least 23 towns. The initiative was also pushed by the New Hampshire Voter Integrity Group, founded by Marylyn Todd. Todd and Brenda Towne, another member of the movement, went on the Lindell Report, My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell's podcast, to get the word out about the effort and showcase Lindell's support.
Lindell, a high-profile supporter of former President Donald Trump, has been sued and ordered to pay millions of dollars in connections with false election claims about voting machines and the companies that produce them.
Towne is not a resident of Stratham currently, but she went to their town meeting to try to speak in support of article 15. However, all non-residents must gain permission to speak through a vote, and her request was voted down.
Supporters of banning the machines claim the machines can lead to "stolen" elections and hand counting is more accurate, despite studies showing the opposite is true.
"These machines have been tested multiple different ways. After each primary and general election for the last couple of times, we randomly select towns and have all of their ballots, after the election, brought to Concord and they're all put through a high speed scanner. And so we double check the count on every single item on those ballots," said Lovejoy. "Two years ago, we spent better part of a month doing recounts because there were so many and it proved that what the AccuVote machines are recording is the actual vote."
Going through the town warrants is not the only way these groups are trying to ban voting machines in the state. House Republicans introduced HR 25 this year, which “resolves to return to the historical intent” of the New Hampshire constitution, including returning to hand counting instead of using machines. Co-sponsor Rep. Nikki McCarter, R-Concord, also appeared on Lindell's podcast to advocate for the bill, which was referred for “interim study” (polite death) on March 14.
Voters reject voting machine-banning proposals
Eight towns with this article that held their town meetings on March 16 rejected the measure. In addition to Newington and Stratham, those towns are Brentwood, Bristol, Hollis, Loudon, Walpole, and Madison.
Most towns defeated the measure by wide margins: Walpole voted 172-5 to shoot it down, Bristol went against it 3611, and Madison voted 130-22. In these towns, the votes in favor of banning the machines even fell short of the number of signatures that were required to get it on the warrant in the first place.
Strafford voted to table the proposal 101-71. The measure failed in most of the other towns that already voted on this type of article in their town meetings too. Those are Fitzwilliam, Lincoln, Sandown, Woodstock, Brookline, Campton, Meredith, Newbury, Tamworth, Ossipee, and Plymouth.
Danville changed the article's wording slightly at its town meeting and voted to require a hand count only for the presidential election, 591-536. However, Lovejoy said Secretary of State David Scanlan will be looking into whether it will be allowed.
Hopkinton/Contoocook is the last town to vote on the initiative, which is article 14 on its ballot. The town will vote on March 21.
"Fully doing away with voting machines, it has failed and it has failed resoundingly everywhere," said Lovejoy. She expects the warrant article in Hopkinton to "have the same fate there that it's had everyplace else."
Attempts to ban voting machines started after the 2020 election, according to McKenzie St. Germain, the campaign director at the New Hampshire Voting Rights Campaign. But their recent failures seem to show that voters aren't willing to support non-fact-based claims. A late February poll from the UNH Survey Center found that twothirds of those who voted in the 2024 New Hampshire presidential primary were very confident that their vote was accurately counted. Only 6% were not very confident or not confident at all.
“The ballot counting devices used in New Hampshire are accurate, count paper ballots, and are not hackable or connected to the internet – any claims to the contrary are false and intentionally undermine faith in our democracy,” said St. Germain. “We're glad to see voters stand up for our election infrastructure and administrators by again rejecting inaccurate claims about our elections.”