Joan Donahue

I was very uncomfortable trusting the new roll out of vote scan machines in Nashua's recent election. I would definitely have more confidence reconciling a hand count to the machine. Although we were able to reconcile tallies of votes at the end of the night, I personally helped many voters who were having trouble because their ballots were being rejected. I admit most of the rejected ballots were due to over-voting or 'coloring' outside the lines. However, I witnessed more than one ballot go through with each of these issues and they were not rejected. At the end of the night it did not change the tallies, however, a hand counted, quality check of the candidates' votes against the machines would eliminate any doubt and give me the assurances I can pass on to voters. These exceptions gave me pause. Please pass this bill.