Voters in the city of Milton, NH, will be asked this week to consider more than 30 different local issues, such as the school budget, the next fire chief and even the types of lightbulbs used in street lamps.
But another item on Milton's town meeting ballot could change the city's election process itself: residents will decide whether election officials should continue to use the ballot counting machine, known as the AccuVote, or handheld. Gotta go back to the count.
Milton is one of more than a dozen New Hampshire communities to vote on vote-counting this town meeting season, with activists launching a campaign to question the accuracy and safety of the state's counting machines.
Activists behind the effort to hand-count all ballots argue that machines can be hacked or rigged, and their effort follows baseless claims of wider issues with the 2020 election.
State and local election officials say AccuVote -- the only approved vote counting machine in New Hampshire -- has proven itself to be reliable in polls and in a thorough external audit conducted last spring.
Cities in New Hampshire decide how they want votes to be counted. According to the Secretary of State's office, 114 communities continue to be counted, but they represent about 10% of the state's electorate.
For many towns, the decision to use a counting machine reduces the speed, availability of Election Day workers, and residents' expectations.
"We live in an immediate world, and everyone wants answers now, or five minutes after the election," said Milton city administrator Chris Jacobs. "If you count by hand, there will be no immediate decision."
"We want the machines out"
AccuVotes, which have been in use since the late 1980s, are decidedly low-tech: They plug into the wall for power but don't connect to the Internet; They rely on memory cards that are programmed by a locally based vendor prior to each election.
For decades, machines were widely viewed as efficient workers of the democratic process. But after the 2020 election, AccuVotes came under fire when some supporters of President Donald Trump began looking for scapegoats to blame for their electoral losses.
At hearings at the State House and during recent city deliberations sessions, opponents of the machines have alleged that they could be hacked, rigged or otherwise compromised. Some Republican lawmakers, backed by the same activists who are imposing city-level bans, have proposed banning the machines statewide.
Stratham City resident Brenda Towne said during a public testimony on such a bill earlier this year, "It is shocking to me that we will allow machines to erase the voices of the citizens of New Hampshire." "We want the machines out."
There is no evidence that machines have wiped out votes.
Pointing to the Windham issue as evidence
But many activists point to what happened in the city of Windham in 2020 to justify their suspicions. There, AccuVote machines didn't correctly count ballots on election night for a city legislative race. While a one-handed recount confirmed that the machines correctly identified the winning candidates, the original machine tally was off by several hundred votes.
A comprehensive audit conducted by a trio of independent election security experts would later determine that the machines were not the root cause of the problem. Instead, auditors found that some of Windham's ballots were folded incorrectly, leaving creases that looked like votes when passed through ballot machines.
But about a year later, some activists in New Hampshire and across the country refused to accept that explanation. Windham is one of those communities where activists have successfully petitioned to obtain warrant articles on the local ballot that would require hand counting in future elections.
In social media posts and campaign mailers, groups such as Hand Count NH and the New Hampshire Voter Integrity Group have made distorted claims about the Windham audit to encourage other communities to ban their machines.
What happened at Windham has also become political fodder for Trump allies who are trying to undermine the legitimacy of the 2020 election, such as election conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell, CEO of MyPillow.
"People in New Hampshire don't want machines," Lindell claimed on his Internet talk show recently, as he interviewed one of the local activists campaigning against AccuVote devices.
Lindell also visited Manchester, NH last month for an "electoral security" presentation targeted toward state and local officials, where he extended the grassroots campaign that has questioned many city ballots this year.
On hand-counted ballots: "It is impossible not to make errors"
Getting ahead of misinformation about New Hampshire's vote counting processes is a priority for the state's top election official, Secretary of State Dave Scanlan.
"Given the environment we have today, we have to do a better job of being transparent and explaining the process and helping people understand that the system we have in place is really good," Scanlan said.
Scanlan, who helped oversee New Hampshire's elections for decades, said most Election Day mistakes are not caused by machines. He said that math errors are more common by humans trying to match lots of ballots by hand.
The risk of a simple matching error is not lost on Margaret Byrnes, executive director of the New Hampshire Municipal Association. Although he said the group did not have a formal position on city ballot initiatives, he cautioned that the sudden transition from machines to hand counting in many large cities could lead to even more errors.
"Imagine such tired people counting by hand after ballot after ballot with 20, 30, 40 questions," Byrnes said. "It is unlikely that errors will not be made."
Steps have been taken in the process to avoid such errors on the machine side also. Before each election, communities that use AccuVote machines are required to test them - publicly, for anyone to see - to make sure they are working correctly.
Just a few weeks ago, Jacobs, the Milton administrator, gathered with other city officials and volunteers inside the local town hall to test-drive his AccuVote machine.
The machine, which resembles a large paper shredder, was taken out of storage and blown to dust. A stack of sample ballots was then inserted into the machine in several directions, including outlier marks and write-in candidates.
As the test ended, Jacobs clicked a button on the AccuVote, signaling that it was time to start spitting out the machine's results.
In the wake of the Register tapes, Jacobs said he supports people in the city in how their elections are managed.
Still, he said, "at this local level, within this community, the process is pure. It's not corrupt."
But despite being given the opportunity to inspect the machines during testing, none of the public, including those who distrusted these machines, attended the event.