War Room, Wednesday, 10am-Noon ET

I was at a polling place in a New Hampshire city from 5:30 am to 11 PM yesterday as a GOP "poll watcher." Poll Watchers are also called a "Poll Challegners."

I watched the proceedings from start to finish, and had several concerns pop into mind.

Hundreds of ballots which have write-in candidates or "over-vote" issues must be scrutinized and hand-counted - by poll workers who may or may not be honest. So - one problem I plan to bring to our NH legislature is, we need to ensure the poll workers are equally Democrat & GOP voters, not all Democrats. The Moderator (election day official) I saw that day was a Democrat. She has the power to appoint poll workers for a political party - if a major party does not designate 1 or 2 of their own workers. GOP-appointed poll workers are our only means of working "inside the ropes" to monitor things as they perform their duties.

Fake "registered Republicans" who are really Dems, but registered as "GOP" to keep real GOP people out of those poll worker positions, are a real concern. A Democrat-leaning Moderator could "select" these fake GOP people if the Republican Party neglected to appoint people to work the polls, and rig things for Dems.

The 2nd problem is the Absentee (also called Mailed-in) Ballots. These mail-ins must be signed on the envelope by the voter, when it is mailed in. The Moderator or her designee is the person who checks for that signature. If he or she knows voters are coming from an area of town that leans Red, she may set aside as "rejected" ballots mailed from those towns, and claim there was no signature on the envelope.

We Poll Watchers are kept in a cordoned off area, 10 or 20 feet away from the Absentee Ballots processing table, and can only superficually observe what is happening - we cannot stand over their shoulders and physically stare down at the envelopes, and see if the signature line is completed, etc.

Third, there are dozens of loose stacks of ballots on tables waiting to be processed, around the election floor. Piles of ballots are carried around, accumulated on tables as they are removed from mailed-in envelopes, etc. They are often stacked behind boxes, plastic tubs and post-office-type trays where they can't be observed from where we Poll watchers are told to sit, stay, and outside the ropes.

Botton line: many of these poll workers have been performing their ballot-clerk "work" for years. They can plainly see the ballots and how the voter has marked them, as they handle these documents.

Let's just say like anyone who is good with card tricks, "slight of hand" tactics are perfected down to a science. I'm sure poll workers in the city precincts have some unfortunate "skills" along these lines - as ballots are sorted into piles, readied for processing through tallying machines, or set aside for write-in-votes hand tallies. There may a third or fourth piles being created - containing GOP ballots which will be, ahem, just set a side, and never run into the machine.

Then there is the periodic emptying of the tally machine's bin as it becomes full. It is hard to see what is going on in the back of the machine while they empty out the contents - it would be easy to grab a few dozen Dem-votes ballots, set them aside, put the stack on a table, some else could walk by, pick it up - and run it again through the machine.

Set aside GOP ballots meanwhile are never run, but the final number of ballots tallied will "match" the physical ballots counted - they just ran the Dem ones through multiple times.

Of course, things are very hectic and noisy throughout the day, and if you are the ONLY GOP poll watcher behind the guardrails observing the process for a few hours, it would be easy to miss a few things happening - as you try to monitor several different tables, the voting machine, the registered-voter check-in process, etc.

Anyway, just some thoughts - I will be contacting my state reps to see how Election laws on the NH books can be improved to get more 'transparency' and ensure fairness - for BOTH major parties, not just our GOP side. :)

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