Electronic voting has been implicated in several counting errors in recent elections, resolved by hand-counting ballots. Residents in three New Hampshire towns have proposed skipping the electronic middle-man and doing away with the machines.
Reformatted.
Residents in Pelham, Salem and Sandown will consider in March if their towns should exclusively hand count ballots in future elections. The issue is presented as a citizen’s petition in each community. The petitions look to stop and prohibit the future use of electronic ballot counting devices in town and school elections, instead requiring a hand count.
Sununu Stooge Joe Sweeney has sided with the machines. ” He stressed the burden of hand-counting on poll workers since they are obligated (to) get ballots counted in a single sitting.”
Sweeney said a local election with 3,000 to 4,000 voters would take over a day to count. A state election with participation from 17,000 voters would take even longer.
In some towns, it would take a lot longer, and there’s no guarantee they’d get it right. But machine issues are not a conspiracy theory, and absent clean and fair elections; there’s not much purpose to them. The result will be lower turnout in town elections – which is abysmal already – and fallout in statewide or general elections.
The Democrats like to say they want to count every vote or for every vote to count. Republicans, among others, say every legal vote. Machines screw up, and people screw up. What is the solution to a problem that hand-counting can address with adequate transparency when the alternative benefits grow-government power politicos on both sides?
To be clear, I’m not sure hand counting fixes the problems. We need better control of absentee ballots and make any other vote-by-mail illegal. No sane nation interested n preventing fraud allows it.
And while same-day registration is a problem, so is motor-voter.
Allowing people to vote who are here but whose legal address is outside New Hampshire is still a problem. Sure, we have an enhanced affidavit law that is supposed to sideline those ballots until legal proof of residency is obtained, but it’s also got holes and room for more. But it will prevent those votes from being counted for a few days to allow proof of residency or domicile, whichever word you prefer.
Maybe we should drop the instant election results gratification paradigm instead of insisting that a faster outcome is always better and focus on what raises trust and participation.
Stop allowing ballots or voters that arrive past the polling place closing time. Period. Maybe make election day a national holiday for everyone, not just government and union employees.
And I’m not saying hand-counting does what we need, but what does?
