09/04/20: This event has ended and a recording of the meeting is now available on the City of Lebanon YouTube channel.
08/31/20: The voting machines for the September 8, 2020 NH State Primary will be tested by the City Clerk and Deputy City Clerk on Wednesday, September 2, 2020 beginning at 9:00AM. This is to ensure our voting machines will count ballots accurately on Election Day.
Testing of machines is a public process; because our offices are closed due to COVID 19, machine testing will be available LIVE via Microsoft Teams, accessible through our website. A video of the testing will be available upon completion. For information on how to access the live meeting, please visit LebanonNH.gov/LIVE.
Four voting machines (one for each ward and one spare) and six memory cards (one regular and one spare per ward) will be tested.
- 55 ballots have been stamped with the word "TEST".
- Prior to testing, the City Clerk marks the test ballot in such a way as to demonstrate a vote for each candidate on at least one test ballot, as well as votes for less than and more than the number of candidates that may be voted for an office, write-ins, and ballots on which there are no votes. The Clerk marks as many as possible of the combinations of choices that a voter may indicate on the ballot.
- The ballots are run through the machine four times, in four different directions, to test the machine’s ability to read a ballot regardless of how it is inserted on Election Day by the voter.
- After all the ballots have been run through the machine four times, for a total of 220 ballots cast, a results tape will be printed and compared against a hand tally, which was prepared by the City Clerk prior to testing. If there is a discrepancy, the ballots are hand-counted again to verify whether it was an error with the machine or an error with the hand tally.
If you have any questions regarding this process, please contact the City Clerk’s office at 603-448-3054.