Here is the fact that swallows the rest of the argument. No voting machine in any New Hampshire town hall has been examined to see whether it can reach the internet. RSA 656:42, X is not a suggestion. It says no electronic ballot counting device shall have access to or be connected to the Internet. The Ballot Law Commission’s own 2021 standards said the same thing.
Approval was supposed to rest on that foundation. Taking the vendor’s word, or testing a sample the vendor sent to a lab, does not answer the statute for the unit that counted our votes on primary day.
On primary day, a moderator stood next to a sealed tabulator in use with a handheld RF meter. At times the meter was quiet. At other times it showed a signal. He did not break a seal. He did not touch a port. He logged what he saw. The letter is in the packet the Commission received Thursday. He is not claiming a network session. The state is not in a position to claim there was none. A changing radio-frequency reading is not a finding. It is a notice that the only way to close the question is to examine the machine. No one has.
Those with a vested interest will dismiss the reading. Speculation is not fact without an independent look at the hardware and software towns actually received. As of today, nobody knows.
Vendors will say it is impossible. Labs will say they tested a sample. A September 15 EAC certificate for a VotingWorks-type is laboratory paper. Liberty’s line is still under test. Neither certificate examines what sits in the town closet. A lab sees what the manufacturer selects and ships to the lab. New Hampshire votes are counted by the machine the town has secured in their closet. Those may be different machines, with different parts. Nobody knows until someone produces a parts list and compares them.
What the public is offered instead is speed, a morning oval test, and an eight-device rescan in Concord on scanners selected by the same office that programmed the cards. Logic-and-accuracy testing reads ovals. A swapped board still reads ovals. The audit is a second count of paper from less than four percent of machines. It does not open the hardware. It does not test for network access. Machines are now poised to count ~ 90% of New Hampshire ballots.
On September 17, we addressed the Commission and served notice. The “ask” was not a new statute. RSA 656:41 already says to examine devices and re-approve any device that is altered — any part, hardware, software, or programming. Four orders the Commission can enter now: field-examine town-owned units, in public, with no vendor paycheck or political conflict; retain technical help; compare the vendor parts list to the box; and put a written finding on the record in sixty days, including whether 656:42, X has been checked on machines in service. Yes, no, or taken under advisement belongs in the minutes. Silence is not a finding.
The ban on a network has to be verified on the device used in an actual election — not described by the company that sold it. Without that look, no official can say New Hampshire knows whether a machine can get online, or that the unit in the closet is still the type that was approved.
The New Hampshire and United States Constitutions do not call for expediency in counting votes. They call for an accurate accounting of each vote. The minutes will show whether anyone looks.
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