In the 11 years she’s worked on local elections, Bow Town Clerk Mridula Naik never felt like the spotlight was on what she was doing. Voters would fill out their ballot, put it in the machine and grab their “I voted” sticker. Typically, that was that.
But on Election Day in November 2020, Naik noticed that a woman she’d never seen in town before was watching her every move: how she was handling ballots, who she was speaking with and what she was saying.
The woman told Naik she came from another state to observe elections in New Hampshire. Long after the last voters trickled out of the polling place, she asked to follow Naik back to her office while she stored away the ballots and equipment. It was the first time anyone had asked to do that.
“That made me very concerned, you know, because I don't know this person,” Naik said.
In that instance, Naik said yes — but she asked a colleague to come with her, just to be safe.
This was just one example of the kind of tightrope that local election officials like Naik have been walking in recent years. As skepticism in the election process has intensified following the 2020 elections, they’re doing a lot of extra work to prove that New Hampshire’s processes have always been transparent and trustworthy. But that’s also made their jobs more demanding than ever before. And while they’re glad to try to reassure voters, they sometimes wonder whether all of this heightened transparency is really making a difference.
Across the country, election workers and town clerks have received unfounded accusations of election tampering, and even threats. Here in New Hampshire, some seasoned election workers say that though they haven’t received outright threats, they know they’re being carefully watched by a growing number of citizens concerned that someone, is doing something, off-kilter to ballots.
To be clear: There’s no evidence that widespread fraud or tampering has occurred in New Hampshire. But that hasn’t stopped false narratives around election fraud from taking root here.
“You know, the political climate right now, it's charged,” said New Hampshire Town and Clerks’ Association President Lee Dufort, who’s also Newport's town clerk. “And even in our small little western neck of the woods, you know, we have residents who come in and they're worried: How are we preserving their vote, how is their ballot counted?”
These concerns have compelled officials from as high up as the Secretary of State’s office and as ground-level as poll workers to recalibrate. The job is now not just a matter of running safe and secure elections. Through more intentional voter outreach and tightened election practices, it's also about convincing voters to have faith in the voting process.
More questions, more one-on-one interactions
This heightened spotlight on New Hampshire’s election processes has taken different forms.
In the last year, small groups of activists have mounted unsuccessful campaigns at the state and local level to eradicate vote-counting machines. This fall, some voters have been intentionally filling out their ballots in a way that would require them to be hand counted instead. During the state primary, those efforts delayed election results in Londonderry, Windham, Merrimack and other towns — and that could happen again on Nov. 8.
In the past two years, local and state election officials said they have also seen a big increase in right-to-know requests looking for information on how elections are conducted. The Secretary of State’s office said they receive one almost daily.
While some of those requests are grounded in genuine curiosity, many seem to be rooted in a suspicion toward the voting system itself.
"These individuals in many cases, are, you know – they're acting like detectives, trying to see if they can find something in the system that is not working properly or incorrect."Secretary of State Dave Scanlan
“These individuals in many cases, are, you know – they're acting like detectives, trying to see if they can find something in the system that is not working properly or incorrect,” said Secretary of State Dave Scanlan.
In addition to doing his own in-person and online outreach, Scanlan said his office is encouraging local officials to take the time to educate community members about the voting process.
Listen to another recent conversation with Secretary of State Dave Scanlan: Elections are ‘a public process’ that anyone can watch
For Naik in Bow, the fact that more citizens are intently watching her work raises the stakes for what’s an already intensive process to get polling places ready for Election Day. Before 2020, Naik said right-to-know requests were rare. That year and into the summer of 2021, she spent a couple of hours responding to them each week because she knows it’s important to address the public’s concerns.
“It made our jobs way more stressful, especially with the right-to-know requests and all the emails we kept getting,” she said. “If I ever quit my job, it would be because I'm done with the elections.”
In Newport, Dufort said she’s taking new steps to increase transparency wherever possible.
Now, after an election, she leaves the original ballot machine count results tacked on a bulletin board in the town clerk’s office for anyone to see. And while the town always publicly tests its ballot counting machine before an election, this time around Newport officials made a point of inviting representatives from the Republican and Democratic parties to that test.
“That way, if we have voters that aren’t trusting us as election officials, we can say, ‘Well, so-and-so from your party was here. Go talk to them. Talk to them about how we tested this,’” Dufort said.
Tina Guilford has been involved in Derry elections for a few years, but this will be her first statewide general election as town clerk. She’s convinced regaining voter confidence is a matter of walking with them by sight — not faith first. She knows a lot of people aren’t going to trust her just because they’re told to, so she always has a reference guide of election laws ready when chatting with citizens.
That usually quiets the “naysayers,” she said.
“They realize that we’re not playing games, and we don't play any games in Derry,” Guilford said. “I really think a lot could be solved by one-on-one conversations rather than social media.”
Clarifying checks and balances
New Hampshire legislators have also taken steps to try to increase transparency and boost voter confidence.
One new change is meant to prevent a repeat of mistakes seen in Windham in 2020, when vote-counting machines mistook ballot folds for votes. Those errors were caught during a recount and didn’t alter the winners of the election — and independent auditors found no evidence of fraud or other tampering. The situation fueled some mistrust in New Hampshire’s voting system, but it also helped to identify potential reforms.
"When we're running on fumes at that point, where do we pull from? What kind of reserves do we have left?"Newport Town Clerk Lee Dufort
In June, lawmakers passed a billthat would require ballot machines to alert a voter if their ballot included any “overvotes,” which is when a ballot appears to have too many choices filled in. Any race with overvotes will now be hand counted. Ballot counting machines are now required to report the number of overvotes and “undervotes” from all races.
Another new law states that any election worker found guilty of committing election fraud will lose their right to vote. Lawmakers also tightened up the rules for who’s responsible for storing and securing ballots after an election.
Dufort said she’s glad to comply with the new additions to the election counting and verification process. But the ever-expanding list of safeguards that the state has added is stretching her team of three staffers thin.
“When we're running on fumes at that point, where do we pull from? What kind of reserves do we have left?” Dufort said.
Dufort also has another proposal for those who continue to have doubts in the election process: Become a poll worker, and learn how it’s done from the inside.
“I haven’t really seen or had too many people say, ‘I really want to be a part of this,’” she said.
