Unfinished certification, no parts list, and a Secretary of State who programs, verifies, audits, and clerks the review
The New Hampshire Ballot Law Commission meets Thursday, September 17, at 1:00 p.m. at the State Archives Building, 9 Ratification Way, Concord. The public should be there. The Commission approves the machines that count our paper ballots. It also hears federal Help America Vote Act complaints. On both jobs, it is flying with incomplete information.
In September 2023, the Commission gave two systems a conditional green light for use starting March 1, 2024: VotingWorks and Dominion/Liberty. Both were required to obtain the highest current federal certification — EAC VVSG 2.0 — by December 31, 2026. Neither has finished. VotingWorks is still under federal test. Liberty’s completed certificates on the old Dominion line are the lower VVSG 1.0 standard from 2005. State lists show 113 towns and wards on Dominion/Liberty and 96 on VotingWorks.
Dominion/Liberty software is proprietary. The public, your town, and the state cannot read it. VotingWorks publishes its source. That difference does not answer the hardware question. Neither vendor publishes a full list of the hardware and software on the units in the field. Neither does the state. An EAC certificate is a lab test of the setup the vendor submitted. It is not a check of the machine in a town hall closet. Best practice is the lab test plus a field test. New Hampshire has treated the lab sticker as both.
September 17 should put three questions on the record. Which machines in use today have finished VVSG 2.0? Where is the state’s validated list of every hardware component and software version actually deployed? When will the Commission require field testing of those parts against two lists — what the vendor said is in the box, and what is in the box?
The Commission cannot answer those questions cleanly while one office holds every pencil. The Secretary of State’s office oversees programming of the devices, including proprietary Dominion/Liberty systems whose code the state cannot inspect. The same office is treated as the verifier of that software. Under RSA 660:35, that office then selects the post-election audit sample — after the memory cards have been programmed — and runs the audit. Under RSA 665:1, the Secretary is also recording officer and clerk of the Ballot Law Commission, the board that is supposed to examine those same devices under RSA 656:40 and 656:41. He does not vote. He does clerk the review of the machines his office programs, vouches for, and audits. That is not one conflict. It is a stack of them.
Paper does not rescue the stack if the chain of custody is weak. A recount only counts what is in the box. New Hampshire has already logged the breaks: tape and official seals that can be pulled and replaced without detection, incomplete logs, missing signatures, and missing timestamps. Evidence is only as good as the chain that preserves it. Ours is not good enough.
This is not a complaint about one officeholder. It is a structural problem. The Legislature should separate the jobs: independent staff for the Commission, recusal when the Secretary is the petitioner, a public parts list, and authority for on-site testing so the Commission is not blessing the homework of the office that assigned it.
None of this requires a theory about any particular election. It requires process before November 3. Field-test the parts. Publish the lists. Fix the custody of the paper. Stop calling a conditional approval a finished security review. If the Commission needs outside technical help to open the hood, it should ask the General Court for the authority and the budget.
Paper ballots are the evidence. Machines are a claim about that evidence. The Ballot Law Commission is the referee. Under current law, the referee’s clerk also programs the clock, checks the clock, and keeps the scorebook. The public can change what the Commission hears on September 17. The Legislature can change who holds the pencil. Both should.
Meeting: Thursday, September 17, 2026, 1:00 p.m. | State Archives Building, 9 Ratification Way, Concord. Confirm the agenda with the Secretary of State’s Elections Division, 603-271-3242.
By Brenda Towne and Al Brandano, NH Voter Integrity Group
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