An Election Audit of Voting Machines in Small New Hampshire Town Could Have Far-Reaching Implications

When something didn’t add up about the vote in tiny Windham, New Hampshire, a chain of events unfolded that resulted in an audit of the town’s voting machines beginning last week.

As New Hampshire Public Radio noted, the core issue is that there was roughly a 400-vote difference between the vote totals that separated two candidates for state representative on election night and the totals that emerged after a state-operated recount took place a week later.

“This fact pattern seems unusual, if not unprecedented,” Mark Lindeman, one auditor on the team overseeing the review of the machines and totals, said Tuesday.

The AccuVote optical scanning machines in New Hampshire use Global Election Management software and were made by Unisyn and then by Global Elections Systems Inc., which is no longer in operation, according to Patch.

The intellectual property of the AccuVote machines and its election management system is now owned by Dominion Voting Systems, which has been involved in election-related disputes in other states. Dominion did not make the machines.

The audit went smoothly on its first day, but on Wednesday, a failure of the livestream cameras that had been broadcasting the audit process left 90 minutes of dark time on screen. That meant that on Thursday, an inspection of machines was redone so that anyone watching could see the process was working, according to Just The News.

Former President Donald Trump has signaled that he is watching the process.

“Congratulations to the great Patriots of Windham, New Hampshire for their incredible fight to seek out the truth on the massive Election Fraud which took place in New Hampshire and the 2020 Presidential Election. The spirit for transparency and justice is being displayed all over the Country by media outlets which do not represent Fake News,” Trump said in a statement posted on his website.

“People are watching in droves as these Patriots work tirelessly to reveal the real facts of the most tainted and corrupt Election in American history. Congratulations Windham — look forward to seeing the results.”

According to Just The News, because AccuVote machines are the only approved vote-counting machines in New Hampshire, if there is a technological issue with just one machine found, it could impact all of the state’s election results.

The state went for Democratic candidate Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential race, giving him 52.9 percent of the vote while Trump received 45.5 percent of the vote.

The audit was triggered because of what happened to Democratic state House candidate Kristi St. Laurent. As of election night, she was short by 24 votes of winning a seat.

But when the recount was held, she was 420 votes short.

How did that happen?

St. Laurent’s initial total had been overcounted, according to the recount, while the Republicans who finished ahead of her were undercounted in the initial tally. Each Republican picked up about 300 votes in the recount.

Windham Election Moderator Betty Dunn has said she did nothing wrong.

“Until and unless it is proven that the town officials made a mistake, I think with all the time and effort and support and the number of public officials who you all put your faith and trust in, we ought to begin with the premise that we did our jobs, and did it well,” she said.

So far, the audit has found that on one of the four machines used in the small town, the totals recorded for Democrats are in the general vicinity of totals counted for Republican candidates on the other machines.

The audit is scheduled to wrap up on May 27.

St. Laurent called the difference in votes a “bizarre and massive discrepancy,” according to Patch.

In a petition to the state Ballot Law Commission seeking a review of the ballots, she said, “Either the machines were programmed to reflect unwarranted adjustments in multiples of 100 to the totals of all Republicans and the top voter receiver among Democrats or a significant number of ballots were double-counted during the (recount) process.”

However, she noted, double-counting “doesn’t explain to any degree why my count would drop by 99.”

This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.