LYNDEBOROUGH — By approving a petition warrant article at Saturday’s Town Meeting, Lyndeborough voters made their town perhaps the first in the nation to formally prohibit computerized vote counting and ensure the tradition of hand counting paper ballots.

Voters approved the petition article that “prohibits vote counting concealed from human eye by method of computers.” Resident Nancy Tobi, who sponsored the petition article, said she brought the article to the town to ensure Lyndeborough would continue to count its ballots by hand, as it has for more than 200 years.

“I know that the town of Lyndeborough loves its elections and is very community oriented. I thought it would be good to be proactive and protect this piece of democracy we have in New Hampshire,” Tobi said Tuesday.

Lyndeborough is one of 144 towns or cities in New Hampshire that still counts its votes by hand, and the town’s approval of the article was a historic one, Tobi said.

“I’ve been trying to make voting changes in the state for years and fighting a losing battle. Having my own town agree that preserving democratic and community-based elections is very fulfilling. I’m ecstatic,” Tobi said. “I think that this may be the first town in the nation that passed into law a prohibition on concealed vote counting.”

Deputy Secretary of State David Scanlan said he isn’t aware of any other town in the state that has passed an article specifically prohibiting electronic counting methods.

“The decision to use an optical scan counting machine is up to the town. Every ballot is still cast on paper,” Scanlan said on Wednesday.

Tobi said she is not afraid of technology, but working as a software designer has opened her eyes to the fallibility of computerized vote counting. Counting machines can cost up to $6,000 each. Maintenance and storage costs could also significantly inflate a town’s small election budget.

But the most important problem is that the public cannot observe the votes being counted, she said.

“If you conceal the vote count from the public you no longer have a democratic election. The state constitution says we will sort and count the votes in open meeting. Unfortunately most of the state’s elections are secret elections done by computers and that, I think, is unconstitutional,” Tobi said.

This lack of transparency allows incorrect vote counting or even vote manipulation to go unnoticed, she said. Volunteers in small towns can easily hand count all of its votes in just a few hours, but even large cities could go back to counting votes by hand, Tobi said, by opening more polling places.

The state has two approved vote counting methods: hand counting or optical scan machines made by Diebold. The Secretary of State’s Office is convinced both methods are accurate and fair, Scanlan said.

“If [Tobi’s] contention is you can’t see the machine calculating the votes, you could say you can’t see how the human brain is operating when it is counting either. I’m not aware of any current challenges from a constitutional standpoint,” Scanlan said.

Resident Stephanie Roper was the only resident to speak against the petition article at Saturday’s Town Meeting. It wasn’t that she thought hand counting was a bad idea, but this article would not help protect it, she said.

“There is a reason why no towns have voted for this,” Roper said at Town Meeting. “If the federal or state government mandates that we change to computerized voting, we have to. So, in effect, this is a feel-good measure. If the federal or state government says we have to change, this article does absolutely nothing practical.”

Practical or not, there were only a few dissenting voice votes and the article passed easily. This was more than just a feel-good vote, Tobi said. Lyndeborough’s decision could be the first successful step in her statewide effort to preserve hand counted voting.

“I would just love to see the federal government or the state of New Hampshire try to tell us that hand counted elections are no longer approved. That is one constitutional battle that I would love to fight,” Tobi said.