Electronic voting systems results have often been scrutinized (ask Democrats after Trump won in 2016), but not like they did after the 2020 elections. Mathematical improbability amplified common irregularities as election integrity came under intense scrutiny.
The issue persists, and efforts have been made at the local level across the increasingly less fruited plain to shore up voter confidence. In my state of New Hampshire, a handful of towns have had measures brought forward to drop the Dominion electronic machine counted ballots to switch to paper. None of them (to my knowledge) has survived turn out to oppose them. But one county in California has managed it.
The county supervisors ultimately voted 3-2 in favor of switching to paper ballots. The vote came after the county terminated its contract with Dominion Voting Systems, which had been providing the county’s electronic voting machines. The termination of the contract left the county without any replacement for their current system, making it necessary for them to find an alternative solution.
Trend-setters, way-pavers, trailblazers, forerunners, pathfinders, torchbearers, and breakers of glass ceilings. No, not ditching Dominion for hand counting, but how they did it. They canceled the contract. Absent that agreement, there had to be a way to count ballots, and the best and only immediate solution was to do it the way it had been done before technology nosed its way in, along with all the uncertainty that followed.
If you can’t get enough citizens to come out and support hand-counting, cancel the Dominion Contract. That forces a debate on what you will do in its absence, the immediate answer to which is hand counting.
It is a crude and Leftist(ish) tactic, and it might be your last term as an elected official, but it has a lot of backbone.
And true, you could end up with another contract with Dominion or someone similar. Still, the journey from hand-counting back is an opportunity to negotiate more protection for election integrity and to debate the problems and concerns of the electorate. A conversation that might light up a few dim bulbs.
We could only hope.
