Brad Winslow is a genial 67-year-old who hugs people he just met. But when it comes to elections, his trust evaporates. A self-described computer geek who has spent much of his career programming machines, Mr. Winslow has long suspected that vote-counting tabulators could be rigged to advantage one politician over another. “I have zero faith in the voting process,” he told me. Mr. Winslow has felt this way for decades, long before the Big Lie. But an error in the vote count in the 2020 election in Windham, the town where he lived, deepened his doubt. He joined a citizens group that searches for evidence of fraud and says he purchased an AccuVote vote-counting machine on eBay — the same ancient model that New Hampshire still uses — to see if he could prove his suspicions. It’s tempting to dismiss him as a conspiracy theorist. Plenty of people do. One voting rights activist in New Hampshire warned me: “Those people can’t be placated.” But the line between a fanatic and a dogged citizen investigator can be difficult to parse. Mr. Winslow has spent countless hours researching the mechanics of elections. Wasn’t that a good thing? Doesn’t democracy depend on citizens who ask questions and demand answers? I decided to listen to him, to see if there was anything that could restore his faith — or shake my own. Eventually, I came to see that rather than dismissing skeptical voters like him, we might better see how they force us to stay vigilant about our elections. Long before Donald Trump hijacked the rhetoric of election security, experts warned that America’s decentralized elections are at risk from human error, software bugs and hackers.
Full Article: Opinion | What New Hampshire Can Tell Us About Restoring Faith in Elections – The New York Times