N.H. should keep paper ballot system

State Rep. Suzanne Harvey, D-Ward 2 Nashua

Nashua Telegraph   Sunday, Aug. 14, 2005

I attended the Aug. 7 film viewing and discussion featuring guest speaker Secretary of State Bill Gardner at the Wilton Town Hall Theater regarding electronic ballots (see Telegraph article, Aug. 8).

I?m grateful for the secretary?s dedication to New Hampshire?s paper ballot system (ensuring an original paper record of actual votes, not just a receipt or facsimile) at a time when many states have or are purchasing electronic voting machines for statewide use.

New Hampshire is on record as having the most election recounts, conducted painstakingly by hand with the actual ballots, often revealing final results that differ from the optically scanned results on election night.

Compare this to a recount from an electronic system, which would yield exactly the same results as shown on election night because there are no actual ballots!

There is an important distinction between voter fraud and election fraud.

There?s a lot of noise in this state and across the country about voter fraud, accompanied by a determined effort to put statutes in place that would make voter registration more cumbersome and ultimately discourage many new voters regardless of age.

Granted there have been examples of voter fraud over the years in the United States. Luckily, in our state, Secretary Gardner could only think of two instances in his three decades as head of the department. Bottom line ? we don?t have a voter fraud problem here.

Now think about the implications of electronic voting and the potential for election fraud.

I and many others are convinced that the potential for fraud using an electronic system is huge, starting with the small number of companies that manufacture the machines and their crackerjack programmers who develop the secret software.

Rather than being transparent, this type of programming fraud would be impossible to detect, hence the growing, realistic mistrust of these systems.

I encourage interested readers to write to Secretary of State Gardner and urge him to continue his efforts to keep our paper ballots and not give in to the federal government?s intrusion into the exemplar way our state handles elections.

We prefer the tried and true method of paper ballots and manual recounts. A fair election depends on who counts the votes, not electronic machines doing this task for us.

Then it?s up to the Legislature to require manual recounts, protect the accessibility and affordability of recounts for all candidates, punish fraud and machine tampering, and ensure the privacy and security of the mandated statewide voter registration list.