Election Beat: History is Made in Lyndeborough, NH

My guest today is Democracy Warrior, Nancy Tobi. Welcome back to OpEdNews, Nancy. There was some excitement last week on the election front in your hometown of Lyndeborough, NH. Would you care to tell us about it?

Hi Joan. Yes, I think that last week, in good New England tradition, we fired the second shot heard round the world. On March 13 towns all over New Hampshire held their annual Town Meetings. This is the longstanding tradition still observed by many New England towns, where we vote on the business, budget, and laws of the town. In New Hampshire the Town Meeting is still direct democracy, meaning we all vote on every issue, on the "articles" on what we call the Town Warrant.

Any citizen of the town can get an article on the town warrant by obtaining at least 25 signatures from registered voters. So this year, in my town we voted on Petition Article 22, which was to prohibit concealed vote counting by computers or otherwise and to guarantee that the voting system would be public for citizen oversight. The vote was overwhelmingly in favor of the article, with only a couple of folks voting "Nay". I think this is historic, actually. We are the first town in NH to pass such a law, and possibly the first town in the nation.

Where did the idea for Petition Article 22 come from? And isn't it a little like closing the barn door after the horse has taken off?

There's no such thing as closing this barn door too late. The horse may be running around wild but the barn is still standing. And you know what, it's our barn. It does not belong to e-voting industrialists. It does not belong to computer scientists. It does not belong to election officials. It does not belong to the Congress or the Judiciary or the Executive branch of our federal government. It belongs to us, to We the People.

Do we protect and defend it or do we let it burn to the ground?
Petition Article 22 was carefully written to address the core problem with our American elections today. Roughly 95% of the nation's elections conceal the vote count from the public eye. We all diligently cast our ballots, but then we hand the ballot box to some anonymous stranger with a hood over his head, who takes the ballots into a sealed room and comes out later to announce our "election results". This is insane and in any other country it would be called a banana republic. In our country it should be called illegal and unconstitutional.

In my town we still have public vote counts and so Petition Article 22 proactively defends that. Other towns or jurisdictions with home rule around the nation can do exactly the same thing to either protect their public vote counts, as we did here in Lyndeborough, or to restore them. Either way, we all have the power to restore public elections as long as we are alive and breathing.

I actually originally published the idea in 2007 in my Hands-On Elections Handbook. Although it took three years for the idea to become reality, I believe Lyndeborough has proven how simple it really is to do.

Some would argue that this is a symbolic, but largely empty, gesture. After all, with the Supreme Court jumping in to interfere with Florida's vote counting in 2000 and the passage of the (ill-named) Help America Vote Act in 2002, it looks like elections have been taken out of the hands of the individual states. So, what's the point, if the Supreme Court or some other federal body can come and say, "Nice try, guys, but this is the way it's going to be."

Well, if you watch the youtube of the Town Meeting you'll see that one of our townspeople brought up this question. And the reality is that the U.S. Constitution endows the states and not the Feds control over elections. The reason is simple: the Founders understood the benefit and the checks and balances inherent in this kind of distributed power. The federal government can step in if and when it deems the states are not doing a proper job of it and we have seen the results of this with the Help America Vote Act.

Unfortunately, like so many other things the US Congress does this bill was corrupt and does not serve the interests of the people of this nation. The Supreme Court's disgraceful actions in Election 2000 were so distasteful that even they, in their own ruling, cynically stated their decision could not be used as precedent in future cases.

Since the founding of the nation, there has always been a tension between advocates of centralized and power and advocates for distributed power. But the foundational principles of the Constitution rest on distributed power and many states and jurisdictions support home rule, bringing distributed power to a more granular quality at the local level. In NH every city and town can decide which of the state-approved voting systems they can use. I'd like to see the day when state officials try to ban public hand counts. That's a constitutional battle I think we should all be raring to fight.

One problem with the strategy used by election integrity activists is that for too long they have focused on centralized power and looked for solutions from the federal government. We have seen this in the divisive argumentation in favor of what is known as "the Holt Bill" in its various iterations. Activists turn a blind eye to the extreme and dangerous consolidation of executive power that is promised by the Holt Bill, as they are ever hopeful that "big brother" will ride in and save the day.

Well, we have learned that -- with the exception of the Voting Rights Act -- we gain nothing more than huge gateways to fraud and more fraud with every successive piece of federal election reform.
We need to take back our public elections from the ground up. One town at a time. One jurisdiction at a time, if that's what it takes. It may take a long time, but what meaningful social and civil rights reform doesn't?

Aint that the truth! Walk us through the steps you took to bring this affirmation into being. Was it hard? Did your fellow citizens get it instinctively or did you have to do a lot of explaining along the way?

Well, first I had to learn the law. In NH we have local control over voting in that each city and town decides which state-approved voting system to use. My town has always hand counted and we love our elections. They are a big community event with bake sales and local chatter. Everyone working the election is a community member. This year one of the election workers had just released a book of short stories and so that was on sale too.

Anyway, I was happy to learn that it only takes 25 signatures to put an article on the town warrant. The warrant is the list of issues that we need to vote on at the town meeting. Most are budget related and proposed by the Selectmen, the town officials. But we also have the petition article. I had this in mind for a few years to do, but it was just this year that I finally decided to go ahead and move on it. Of course, I waited until the very last minute, and so had only a couple of days to get my signatures. I went around my neighborhood first, and then I went to the local general store, where they were happy to let me stand around in the store and collect signatures.

It was the easiest sell in the world. Nobody disagreed and everyone was enthusiastic about it. And of course the first person I asked to sign was one of our respected town elders. So everyone signing after that saw her name, and also when it came down to the vote she was well aware of it.

I'd like to note a couple of other things about this. In the past I have worked with grassroots organizations to try to get things done at the state or even federal level. In this case, I did not work with any organization - other than my own town, of course, which is the best organization you can have behind you for something like this.

I did not make a lot of noise ahead of the vote; I did not invite protesters. I did not publicize it at all. For me, this was purely an internal town matter. I think this is important, because this is real; it's as real as you can get when you are reaching out to your own community. Restoring our democratic elections hinges on this. We must connect with our communities and we must bring our elections back to this level of participation, oversight, and public control.

The other thing I want to note is that before I did anything I spoke with our top two election officials in the town, our Moderator and our Town Clerk. I wanted to hear their thoughts on the matter. They were both enthusiastically in favor of the petition article, thank goodness.
But even if you find otherwise in other places, even if you find opposition among those whose support you would rather have, I think this is still worth pursuing.

It is so simple. And it is so do-able.

Who's going to jump on the bandwagon now? Other towns in NH? In other states? What's your prediction? And, was Lyndeborough's historic passage of this article well publicized?

This historic town law was not really well publicized outside of the election integrity blogs. There was one really fabulous article that was written in a local newspaper, but I have not seen much else. I don't find this too surprising as the whole thing was well under the radar from start to finish, and I am not out there blowing the horn about it either. Somehow I feel as though this is a very important event but that its importance and significance will only come to light later.
I sincerely hope others will follow suit in their communities. I've heard from a few folks here in NH who have it in mind to do this at next year's town meetings. Home rule jurisdictions around the nation are ripe for this type of local control action too.

I suspect that it may be more challenging for those coming after me, because the opposition is now alerted and this particular opposition (to restoring public elections) has always been effective at manipulating truth, people, and whatever else it takes to retain their control. This is another good reason to conduct these strategies on a more stealthy and local level rather than to make a lot of noise about it ahead of time.

I am always happy to talk to other people interested in voting rights and restoring our public elections, so yes, I am available to consult, brainstorm, listen, and lend support as best I can.

Well, it's lovely to have a happy ending to this particular election integrity saga. Way to go. Anything you'd like to add, Nancy?

I guess I would just reiterate how important and how satisfying it is to work within your own community, especially when you are able to achieve success like this. I am so proud of my town. This vote could have gone either way really. I did not do any lobbying or typical "activist" activities prior to the Town Meeting. I was ready to see where the town stood on this. If you see my smile after the vote, which is at the end of the youtube that I posted I think that says it all! That definitely goes down as one of the happiest of days for me, but mostly I just feel proud of my town and our wonderful community elections where the vote is seen as sacred and the duty to count it all the more so. As our Town Moderator, Walter Holland says when we come together to count the votes, "these are your neighbors' votes. Handle them with care."

Everyone in America should be so blessed. If all our cities and towns had real elections like we have here in Lyndeborough, we'd see some real change in Washington.

Thank you so much for talking with me. And for caring so much about grassroots democracy. I hope this catches on.

YouTube :Lyndeborough Bans Computerized Voting

Cross posted from OpEdNews: http://www.opednews.com/articles/2/Election-Beat--History-is-by-Joan-Brunwasser-100321-516.html

Joan Brunwasser is a co-founder ofCitizens for Election Reform (CER) which exists for the sole purpose of raising the public awareness of the critical need for election (more...)

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