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It is worth noting that Windham New Hampshire had a case of actual vote miscounting in the 2020 election- though not the presidential election- and the miscount

It is worth noting that Windham New Hampshire had a case of actual vote miscounting in the 2020 election- though not the presidential election- and the miscounts did not change the results. The Democrat who lost the race is the one who requested the recount (and the recount favored the Republican candidates who won). See https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-new-hampshire-voting-machines-election-2020-campaign-2016-7bd52410b91c65a1922141d8a7af626f https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-new-hampshire-voting... https://www.concordmonitor.com/voting-machines-nh-new-hampshire-43907947 https://www.concordmonitor.com/voting-machines-nh-new-hampsh... The news of this has of course been buried under all of the false claims of voter fraud from the 2020 presidential election. So it is not surprising that New Hampshire would be looking at a new approach to voting machine technology.

Rebelgecko 4y ago
Wow, those error rates are actually much higher than I'd have expected. I wonder if the cause is something like a difference in how humans vs machines deem ballots invalid?
- jandrese 4y ago
  You can change a lot of votes by altering the rules as to what is considered a valid vote. Read into the details of the 2000 election and you'll see just how much of a leg up George W Bush got from party control of the vote counting. There are plenty of scenarios where he would have lost if the rules were decided differently during the counting process. Had the decisions been made neutrally Bush would have lost in Florida.
- ensignavenger 4y ago
  The audit found that the ballots had been folded "incorrectly" (Is there a right way to fold the ballots?) and if the crease went through the mark for a candidate, it would count the crease as a mark. This meant if the voter had marked another candidate, it would think it was double voted and not count it, and if they had not marked a candidate, it would count it as a vote. I am not sure having the source code of the machines be open source would help, but maybe make it easier to audit and detect that the crease would lead to a miscounted ballot.
aksss 4y ago
Right, the interest in having auditable and secure elections is not simply a right/left issue and does not mean one's an "election denier" or an "insurrectionist". It just stands to reason that basic controls for governance should be a key attribute of how elections are run, and no, the feds shouldn't be paying for this, imo. In my home state, a Republican candidate (albeit disowned) was indicted for ballot harvesting, particularly for hiring a consultant from CA to run around through a particular east Asian community collecting ballots. If a system works, every politician will exploit it. * ID's should be required (like they are for everything else, including travel, bank accounts, bars, etc); * voter rolls should be scrubbed; * election results should be auditable;

Rebelgecko 4y ago

Wow, those error rates are actually much higher than I'd have expected. I wonder if the cause is something like a difference in how humans vs machines deem ballots invalid?

jandrese 4y ago
You can change a lot of votes by altering the rules as to what is considered a valid vote. Read into the details of the 2000 election and you'll see just how much of a leg up George W Bush got from party control of the vote counting. There are plenty of scenarios where he would have lost if the rules were decided differently during the counting process. Had the decisions been made neutrally Bush would have lost in Florida.
ensignavenger 4y ago
The audit found that the ballots had been folded "incorrectly" (Is there a right way to fold the ballots?) and if the crease went through the mark for a candidate, it would count the crease as a mark. This meant if the voter had marked another candidate, it would think it was double voted and not count it, and if they had not marked a candidate, it would count it as a vote. I am not sure having the source code of the machines be open source would help, but maybe make it easier to audit and detect that the crease would lead to a miscounted ballot.

aksss 4y ago

Right, the interest in having auditable and secure elections is not simply a right/left issue and does not mean one's an "election denier" or an "insurrectionist". It just stands to reason that basic controls for governance should be a key attribute of how elections are run, and no, the feds shouldn't be paying for this, imo. In my home state, a Republican candidate (albeit disowned) was indicted for ballot harvesting, particularly for hiring a consultant from CA to run around through a particular east Asian community collecting ballots. If a system works, every politician will exploit it. * ID's should be required (like they are for everything else, including travel, bank accounts, bars, etc); * voter rolls should be scrubbed; * election results should be auditable;