This committee was established though HB 285 in the 2008 session. It gave the Secretary of State the authority to name its members, which have to include two employees of his department, three members of the General Court, three local election officials, and two members of the public.
Secretary Bill Gardner invited Suzanne as one of the legislators to serve on the committee based on her former membership on the Election Law Committee in the House and her residency in a municipality with a large voting population.
The committee's charge is to "facilitate the design of an electronic ballot counting device, or the identification of an electronic ballot counting device, for use at future elections in the state of New Hampshire that will be fail safe and probably correct and can be supported by an independent technical review to eliminate potential manipulation of election results by tampering. The committee shall also research the upgrades that are available for voting machines currently used in New Hampshire and recommend which upgrades should be required for the continued use of the machines by cities and towns."
Many American voters do not have faith in the electronic scanning machines that count our votes. There is a programmed memory card in the machine that is not tamper-proof and is considered "proprietary" by its manufacturer. Even though at 6:00 AM on election day when the polls open the moderator tests the machine to ensure that the count is zero, there are voters who do not trust the operation and programming of the card.
The final report of the committee's findings and recommendations is due on November 1, 2009.