The Windham vote audit report shows the strength of NH’s election process

The “song” of the 2020 election has ended, but the “melody” of allegations of fraud seems to “linger on,” to fracture the lyrics of an old tune. Recently, however, a number of things have occurred which seem to have cemented the fact that the election results were correct and no fraud of any significant scope occurred.

In Wisconsin, Sen. Ron Johnson, a Trump supporter who supported an audit of that state’s results in an effort to prove fraud, acknowledged that the only reason Trump lost the state is that he underperformed other GOP candidates. Put another way, President Biden got more votes!

In Arizona, the seemingly never-ending audit has proven nothing.

In New Hampshire, meanwhile, the audit of the Windham state representative election, which was ordered by the New Hampshire legislature and conducted in late spring, was reviewed by the Ballot Law Commission, of which this writer is chairman, as required by the legislation creating the audit. The commission released its report and findings in a decision dated Aug. 23.

In the decision, the commission cited the facts and findings of the audit report, which concluded no fraud or pattern of irregularities, but in fact placed the responsibility for the strange results in Windham on an improper folding machine, which was used to fold the record number of absentee ballots, and which in turn caused the vote counting machines to misread folds as votes on many ballots.

As the decision notes, the audit report and testimony “concerned the careful manner in which the audit was conducted.” It involved evaluation of the functioning of the ballot-counting machines, which, “like all such machines in New Hampshire, are the AccuVote machines certified for use by this commission.” The audit also involved a full recount of the race for state representative and certain other races.

The report also notes: “The audit hand recount of ballots confirmed the hand recount originally conducted by the Secretary of State and upheld by the Commission, with a confirmation that the total number of votes reported on election night was the same as those recounted, and that the hand count results were virtually identical in both hand recounts, being exactly the same in five of the eight candidate totals and varying by only one or two votes in the remaining three candidate totals, indicating that the final results of the election are indisputable.

“[T]his audit found the primary root cause of the discrepancy to be folds through vote targets on some absentee ballots, largely resulting from using a machine to fold absentee ballots. That folding machine, leased by the town for other purposes, did not fold ballots along the score lines between vote targets, where the ballots were designed to be folded. Instead, it often folded ballots through vote targets in the State Representative contest, which the scanners interpreted as vote attempts a substantial fraction of the time ... The problem may have been exacerbated by inadequate maintenance that allowed a build-up of white powder inside the scanners, obstructing the lenses ... We also found, as is generally the case in recounts, that the hand count was able to ascertain voter intent in some instances where voters marked ballots incorrectly, leading the scanners to misread valid votes as undervotes or overvotes. No malware was found on any of the tabulators. Forensic examination of a random sample of paper ballots revealed nothing anomalous about the paper, printing or marking.”

As to the commission’s recommendations, “The Commission believes that the recommendations on improving machine maintenance, especially cleaning the machines prior to elections in order to reduce the chance of machine misreading of ballots, should become part of normal procedure by election officials.” Obviously, also, absentee ballots should be folded only as indicated on the ballots! The folds only affected the state representative race, the audit found.

Finally, the Commission concluded, probably disappointing conspiracy theorists and one recent president, “The Commission finds that the discrepancies in Windham in November 2020 were the result of a unique set of circumstances, not the result of malfunctioning of the ballot counting devices, and are not likely to reoccur. The Commission finds that the presently authorized AccuVote machines are capable of continuing to meet the requirements for elections held in New Hampshire.”

New Hampshire voters should remain confident that their votes count and elections here result in the candidates receiving the most votes getting elected, and should thank our election officials for keeping it that way.

Brad Cook is a Manchester attorney. The views expressed in this column are his own. He can be reached at bradfordcook01@gmail.com.