Electronic ballot fraud in New Hampshire a very valid concern

Laconia Daily Sun  August 29th, 2008

To the editor.

The Sun's August 27 edition carried a Letter to the Editor from Repre­sentative Bob Perry, vice-chair of the N.H, Legislature's Electronic Voting Machine Subcommittee. It is good that the Vice-chair of such a commit­tee is tuned in and is on high alert for voting machine misdeeds. I am the producer of a TV docu­mentary, "Can Voting Machines Be Trusted?." which will run on LRPA-TVs Channel 26 after the N.H. Primary Election is concluded on Sep­tember 9. The documentary answers its own question by examining the re-count of the New Hampshire Presi­dential Primary election this past Jan­uary. In N.H.'s case — this time — the difference between the machine num­bers and the human manual recount numbers can be completely attributed to human errors (watch the documen­tary to see how .

But Representative Perry is on the right track to be wary- that all of NITs optical-scan ballot counting machines are programmed by chips supplied by a private vendor in Massachusetts. That certainly opens the door as to what a vested party might be able to do as to turn out results that are contrary to what the voters marked on their ballots. That is a VERY legitimate concern, and one to be mindful of as we proceed with our elections in N.H. As the video "Can Voting Machines Be Trusted?" shows, if the results of a N.H. election are suspect, there- is a paper trail that can be recounted by hand. In January's Presidential Pri­mary the machine and human num­bers were within a fraction of one percent different, "And. again, the difference was explained by humans messing up, and not the machine*,'¹ N.H. law proscribes an automatic recount if the difference between winner and loser is less that three percent. So an astute "hacker" will have to make the- outcome more than three percent if a recount is not to be automatically triggered. That makes it up to us humans to sniff a varmint in the election and call for a. recount when the results are greater than three percent and something in our gut says "something ain't right'"

Bob Longafoaugh

Alton Bay