They displayed an unhealthy addiction to vote counting technology that is decidedly anti-democratic, but which apparently provides some ease in running elections.
The standard for democratic elections is not ease of use.
Diebold optical scanners have fraud-by-design technology, so any insider can flip an election faster than you can say "I want my democracy back".
45% of our New Hampshire polling places hand count our votes. They have developed effective and efficient hand count methodologies. They find community volunteers who are honored to be ballot counters.
In stark contrast to Diebold-sponsored secret vote counting elections, our hand count elections comply with the New Hampshire Constitutional requirement to "sort and count" our votes in "open meeting."
New Hampshire's hand count towns successfully apply a time honored, fully observable, method of ballot counting, yet the New Hampshire Ballot Law Commission approved vote counting machines because they feared we can't hand count our elections.
Our legislature can provide better guidance to the Ballot Law Commission for approving vote counting methods, and can legislate against secret vote counting technologies. Let's hope we see some real movement in this direction in the coming legislative session.
As we continue to defend our first in the nation primary, let's move forward in New Hampshire to be first in the nation in election integrity.
Let's rid the state of secret vote counting. If we can't do it in New Hampshire, what hope is there for the rest of the nation?
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