Another State Prepares for Audit of Controversial Voting Machines
New Hampshire will audit the voting machines used in one town during the 2020 elections.
Republican Gov. Chris Sununu on Thursday said he intends to sign a bill calling for an audit of the machines used in the town of Windham, according to the Washington Examiner.
“I think they designed the bill very well,” he said. “And I fully intend on signing it and moving that forward as soon as we can.”
The bill authorizes a recount and forensic analysis of votes tallied by AccuVote optical scanning machines, according to Patch.com.
The AccuVote machines in New Hampshire use Global Election Management software and were made by Unisyn Voting Solutions and then by Global Elections Systems Inc., which is no longer in operation. 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.
In November, eight candidates ran for four state representative seats to represent the town at the Statehouse.
About 10,000 people voted. When the votes were counted initially, Democratic Kristi St. Laurent landed in fifth place, 24 votes shy of gaining the fourth seat.
She requested a hand recount, but that ended up with her losing by 99 votes.
The recount showed that the four winning Republicans gained between 297 and 303 votes each. The other three Democrats also gained — but only between 18 and 28 votes.
State law allows for only one recount, but St. Laurent wanted more done after what she called a “bizarre and massive discrepancy.”
In her petition to the state Ballot Law Commission 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.”
Because state law limited what could be done, the bill calling for an audit was developed.
The bill calls for a direct audit of the machines, their memory cards and hand ballot counts.
A hand tabulation of the state representative race, the U.S. Senate race and the governor’s contest will be done to see if those totals match the machine numbers.
A report will be filed 45 days after the audit.
The audit is not technically being called a recount, which means it will not change the results of the election.
Ken Eyring, a conservative activist who was a prime mover in getting the audit conducted, said it is important to answer questions about the election.
“I have had many conversations with NH Secretary of State Bill Gardner over the past month regarding the importance of validating the integrity of NH elections,” Eyring said.
“Both of us agree there are unanswered questions that must be resolved — and that it is important to leave no stone unturned in seeking the truth. That goal can only be achieved if the right forensic analysts are chosen to perform the forensic audit on Windham’s machines and ballots,” he said.
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