Machine count problems found in NH audit

FPI / May 25, 2021

Auditors in Windham, New Hampshire said they have discovered problems with the 2020 machine counts that were “large enough to account for discrepancies” in Nov. 3 election results for four state representative seats.

Auditors, who finished their hand recount on May 21, said they found “experimental confirmation that if the contest is undervoted, a fold through a vote target can create a vote.”

“The fold effect is large enough to account for discrepancies, but might not be all that’s going on,” the team of auditors said in a Twitter post on May 22, adding that “75 folded ballots voted straight Republican. Only 48 votes recorded for them. Folds generated overvotes. This is machine used on Election Day [for] most absentee ballots.”

Another machine was found to have “an even more dramatic problem” by the auditors, who said that only 28 percent of the votes for Republican candidates were counted.

AccuVote machines were used in New Hampshire for the 2020 election. The AccuVote machines’ intellectual property is owned by Dominion Voting Systems.

“The work is not completed yet. While the folding seems to be a strong contributor it clearly is not the only factor,” auditor Harri Hursti said on Sunday. “For example: We have observed vastly different error rates on two machines processing the same ballots. Work continues.”

Mark Lindeman, who is part of the audit team, told WMUR: “Something we strongly suspect at this juncture, based on various evidence, is that in some cases, fold lines are being interpreted by the scanners as valid votes.”

Windham’s four state representative seats were all won by Republicans on Election Night.

Democrat candidate Kristi St. Laurent, who lost by 24 votes, claimed that the machines were improperly programmed, and that double voting was involved. St. Laurent requested an audit and last month New Hampshire Republican Gov. Chris Sununu gave authorization for forensic analysis and a comprehensive recount of the 2020 election votes in Windham.

An automatic recount was done, resulting in St. Laurent losing 99 more votes after a hand recount. Four Republicans gained about 300 votes each. The other three Democrats gained between 18 and 28 votes.

Free Press International