Milton, N.H. residents will decide whether election officials should continue using a ballot counting machine, known as the AccuVote, or revert to a hand count:
A voter places a ballot into an AccuVote ballot counting machine in December 2021 in the town of Greenland, N.H.
For many towns, the decision to use a ballot counting machine comes down to speed, the availability of Election Day workers and expectations of residents. New Hampshire state troopers deliver ballot counting machines to the site of an audit of a state legislative election in the town of Windham. Auditors concluded in a 2021 report that miscounts in the election were caused by the way ballots were folded.
"People in New Hampshire do not want machines," Lindell recently claimed on his internet talk show, as he interviewed one of the local activists campaigning against AccuVote devices. That risk of a simple tallying error isn't lost on Margaret Byrnes, executive director of the New Hampshire Municipal Association. While she said the group doesn't have a formal position on the town ballot initiatives, she cautioned that a sudden transition from machines to a hand count in many larger towns would likely lead to even more errors.