By KATHARINE WEBSTER, InDepthNH.org
“Mr. Blank” got 15 write-in votes for Rockingham County sheriff, 23 write-ins for register of deeds, and four for governor in Atkinson’s state Democratic primary last week. Barney Fife, the comical deputy sheriff on “The Andy Griffith Show,” and Woody, the toy sheriff in the Toy Story movies, each got one vote for sheriff, too.
This inquiring reporter knew who Barney Fife and Woody were. But who was Mr. Blank? Is he a real person?
No, said town moderator James Garrity. But Atkinson’s new ballot-counting system, made by VotingWorks, requires the town to account for every single write-in. When voters filled in the bubble on the write-in line for an office but failed to write a name next to that bubble, Garrity dubbed it a vote for “Mr. Blank.”
The new VotingWorks system makes an image of every single ballot and scans each one for entries on the write-in lines. The system also requires election officials to assign a name to each write-in candidate. All are reported on the Official Write-In Adjudication Report.
“Sometimes, people … write in Batman, Superman, Mickey Mouse, Dolly Parton,” said Garrity, a retired pastor and former Republican state representative. “Years ago, they used to say, ‘Take all those un-serious votes and add them up and just write Scatter.’ But now, if Aquaman gets one vote, Aquaman is on the list.”
“Maybe it grew out of the suspicion of people who don’t trust elections or don’t trust machines,” he said. “In some cases, people will write in a weird vote just to see if it’s counted, and if it’s not posted, they’ll say that obviously the election was stolen.”
Atkinson first used the VotingWorks system in its town elections last March, when – in a hand recount for a tight library trustee race – the machine was confirmed to have accurately counted every ballot except one. On that one, someone hand-wrote the full, formal name of the winning candidate on the write-in line instead of filling in the oval next to the candidate’s name as printed, Garrity said.
“I tell people, ‘Whether you like it or not, our elections are extremely secure … and these machines are more accurate than people, so trust them,’” he said. “This is New Hampshire, not Kazakhstan.”
Not everyone is so confident in the machines. Some citizen activists, such as Brenda Towne, question how anyone can be sure that the machines have not been altered, tampered with, or infected with malware. She plans to speak at a Ballot Law Commission hearing on Thursday morning.
The Ballot Law Commission is supposed to ensure that “our ballot machines are not going on the internet, that they’re free of any kind of malware, that they’re free of any kind of hardware that could manipulate results – and we just want to make sure they do that job,” Towne said in an interview Tuesday.
Windham Recount and Voter Fraud Claims
Many of the activists’ concerns stem from Windham’s town elections in 2020, when a hand recount request resulted in a finding that four Republicans running for state representative had each received about 300 votes more than the machines counted – and the Democratic challenger received 99 fewer votes. The recount did not change the results of the race.
Rather than fraud, an audit found that the miscount was caused by a faulty folding machine the Windham town clerk used to mail out thousands of absentee ballots during the COVID-19 pandemic. Off-kilter fold lines caused the machines to misread some ballots.
The audit and complaints by Windham voters led the state Attorney General to mandate that Windham election officials attend an election training and recommend that Secretary of State David Scanlan appoint an election monitor, which he did in both 2022 and 2024.
Windham’s problems, plus Donald Trump’s false claims that widespread voter fraud led him to lose the 2020 presidential election to President Joe Biden, also led Scanlan to establish a Special Committee on Voter Confidence.
The committee’s final report in late 2022 found that New Hampshire’s elections were secure and that there was no evidence of intentional fraud. But the committee did recommend replacing the old AccuVote optical counting machines, cleaning up the voter rolls more frequently, providing more training for local election officials, and restricting the use of absentee ballots.
Many of those changes have since been incorporated into law, and three years ago the state Ballot Law Commission approved the VotingWorks and Dominion systems for use. (Dominion Voting Systems was acquired last year by Liberty Vote USA.)
In June 2024, the state also began offering towns financial assistance to purchase the new ballot-counting systems or electronic voter check-in systems, using Help America Vote Act funds.
Scanlan said shortly before last week’s primaries that nearly all cities and towns had adopted the new machines, and that the state continues to try and improve election security.
“The record is pretty clear at this point that in every election, there is some inappropriate activity, but it is very low, (and) it is not organized,” he said.
However, one member of the Special Committee on Voter Confidence refused to join the bipartisan final report: Ken Eyring, co-founder of the Government Integrity Project and a self-described “constitutional conservative.”
Eyring issued his own report, and his organization continues to claim that there are serious chain of custody gaps in Windham for both the ballot-counting machines and paper ballots. Many of Towne’s concerns echo Eyring’s.
Concerns and Company Explanations
Towne said Tuesday that the commission should hire independent experts to examine the hardware and software of both the VotingWorks and Liberty Vote USA machines.
“I’m from the private sector,” said Towne, who worked for many years as customer director for Plexus Corp., which designs and manufactures hardware, software and printed circuit boards. “We could never do this where we would have the company supply chain incorporate a product without sending our engineers out to certify that.”
Both voting systems have been certified by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. On Tuesday, VotingWorks became one of just three companies with systems certified to the commission’s newest standard. The Liberty Vote USA machines are certified to an older standard, but are being tested against the new one.
In early July, President Trump fired two Democratic commissioners on the Election Assistance Commission and allowed the remaining Republican commissioner to resign, according to multiple news reports. There are currently no commissioners, slowing the certification process.
In response to some of Towne’s concerns, VotingWorks spokesman Ben Adida said Wednesday that VotingWorks machines are never connected to the internet – and cannot be, as required by New Hampshire law. All VotingWorks systems also use open-source code that can be examined by anyone, he said.
“It’s impossible to connect them (to the internet) even if you try, because we’ve made sure there’s no hardware or software on them that could make that connection. All of that is tested by an independent testing lab, accredited by the Election Assistance Commission to meet the New Hampshire requirements,” Adida said. “All of our source code is open for the world to review. We have nothing to hide, and we show it by being fully transparent.”
Towne said she had been told by the election moderator in Nashua’s Ward 9, who is listed as John Cawthron, that he had detected radio frequency activity in the ballot-counting machines on primary day when no other devices were nearby.
“Are there chips in these machines that are cellular or RF (radio frequency) based, or even software that could be slipped inside that could create malicious results?” Towne asked.
Adida said all electromechanical equipment generates some radio frequency activity. It’s not a sign of nefarious attempts to alter the machine’s software or introduce malware, he said.
“In fact, it would be extremely unusual if an active ballot tabulator didn’t have some kind of RF activity,” he said, adding that “It’s not possible to introduce malware onto VotingWorks machines – we use a technology called secure boot that ensures that only authorized software is allowed to boot, and all of that approved software is also fully reviewed by the independent testing authority.”
The machine results are analyzed by taking secure USB drives from each ballot-counting machine and inserting them into a separate, tabulator machine, Garrity said: No internet connection is present or needed.
Adida said that even software updates are performed in person, using a digitally signed USB drive. “Only digitally signed software can be installed, so there is no chance of tampering.”
The Bottom Line?
Scanlan declined through spokesperson Anna Sventak on Tuesday to comment on Towne’s claims. He will present results of a random audit of several towns and wards at the Ballot Law Commission meeting on Thursday.
But Garrity, a Republican moderator in a Republican-leaning town, said he is confident that New Hampshire’s elections are accurate and secure – and that most voters, are, too. Only two people put their ballots in a pile to be counted by hand during last week’s primaries, he said.
“What’s cool about recounts is people who might be skeptical, they actually watched the recount process, they go, ‘Ahh, OK, now I trust the system – and not only do I trust the system, but now I trust the machines,’” he said.
VotingWorks, whose ballot-counting systems have been used for three years in some New Hampshire cities and towns, continually improved the machines to state standards based on their feedback, he said.
“This silliness around elections has created a lot more work for moderators, clerks, election officials and the supervisors of the checklist (who) are the backbone of the election system,” he said. “Both voting machines were put through the wringer with the Ballot Law Commission. They do the job, and they do it well.”