Outdated ballot scanners prompt worry, theories
Some equipment called ‘primitive’
When New Hampshire voters cast their ballots in Tuesday’s first-in-thenation primary, many will do so using scanners that are at least 15 years old — with some potentially dating back to Bill Clinton’s presidency.
Election experts say the aging AccuVote ballot tabulators in use across roughly half the state’s towns and cities don’t pose additional security risks. The concern is their age.
With a dwindling supply of replacement parts, breakdowns could create Election Day headaches for local election officials, who might be forced to count ballots by hand — a process that could delay reporting their results. Malfunctions and ballot-counting delays in other states in recent years have sometimes been used to promote conspiracy theories that undermine public confidence in the vote, despite no evidence of any widespread problems with voting machines.
Franklin, a small city about 20 miles north of the state capital, has no wiggle room if something goes awry with its scanners.
“We have three machines and three polling places. That’s it, no backup,” said Olivia Zink, a member of the Franklin City Council who also is executive director of the voter advocacy group Coalition for Open Democracy. “If one goes down, we hand count.”
Zink, who will be working at her local polling place Tuesday, said she is less worried about hand counting even if turnout is robust among the 4,500 registered voters because the ballot contains only the presidential primary. She urged everyone to be patient if results are delayed. One potential glitch: If it’s snowy or rainy, damp ballots can mess up a ballot scanner.
“If it’s a sunny, beautiful day, we’re in great shape,” Zink said.
Reducing the chances of a major disruption is the ballot itself, with just a single race and a state requirement that vote counting continue uninterrupted until finished. New Hampshire will hold primaries for state and local races later in the year.
All New Hampshire voters mark their ballot by hand, but how those ballots are counted depends on the city or town. Just under half opt to hand count and have done so for years, but those are among the least populated in the state. The most populous towns and cities use machine tabulators, so most ballots cast in the state are counted electronically using the AccuVote scanners.
The same type of ballot scanners are used by local voting jurisdictions in five other states, according to Verified Voting, a nonpartisan group that tracks U.S. voting equipment.
“You could say it’s primitive technology. You could say it’s simple and reliable technology. Both of those things can be true,” said Mark Lindeman, the group’s policy and strategy director.
He said New Hampshire’s tabulators have been kept in good condition and that the biggest challenge for election officials is finding replacement parts. He sees the worst-case scenario as local election officials having to resort to hand counting because a tabulator has failed and they don’t have access to a backup.
“As worst cases go, that’s a pretty good one,” Lindeman said. “The ballots are safe. This will not prevent New Hampshire voters from voting or prevent New Hampshire voters from having their votes counted.”
Even so, any problems with voting machines or ballot counting devices provide an opening for those who want to cast doubt on the outcome. Former President Donald Trump, who won this week’s Iowa caucuses but faces a potentially tougher test in New Hampshire, regularly signals that an anticipated close election will be “rigged.”
His false claims about widespread fraud in the 2020 election, which he lost to Joe Biden, has produced a tsunami of conspiracy theories about voting machines.
“If there are major failures and results come really late, and if there is not information ahead of time to the public that we might be hand-counting and what that involves — in a worst-case scenario the vacuum that leaves could allow folks to come forward with conspiracy theories and question what the results are,” said McKenzie St. Germain with the voter advocacy group America Votes NH.
In Derry, south of Manchester, Town Clerk Tina Guilford tested her eight tabulators this week to ensure they were working properly and counting ballots correctly. It’s a process being repeated across the state as local election officials prepare for the primary.