Machine-tabulated 2020 election results in Windham, New Hampshire, were likely different from a later hand-recount because of the way the town folded absentee ballots before they were delivered to voters, an election audit has determined.
The ballot folds caused election-day totals to mistakenly exclude some votes and count extra votes for a local Democratic candidate.
"[A]uditors investigating the election in the town of Windham believe a folding machine used by the town to try to accommodate the numbers of absentee ballots in the November election is responsible for mistakenly adding to vote counts for candidates in four legislative seats," NBC Boston.
After that November recount, four Republicans gained between 297 and 303 votes each, while three Democrats gained between 18 and 28 votes each, NHPR reported last year.
"If a voter didn't fill in the bubble for their preferred candidate correctly, a machine might not interpret that as a valid vote - but a person looking at the same ballot would likely catch that mark and recognize the voter's intent," NHPR reports.
"And if a voter appeared to fill in too many bubbles - or, if the machine thought a voter filled in too many bubbles, because one of the bubbles had a fold line through it - it could also throw off the machine count."
"While there was a little bit of variation, as is expected during any recount, those results didn't differ from the machine counts as widely as the results for the state representative race," reported NHPR. Mark Lindeman, an auditor and co-director of Verified Voting, said the audit uncovered "No evidence of fraud or political bias," and also said that he hadn't heard "a credible hypothesis of how fraud could account for what we found."
Tuesday, June 1, 2021
NH Election Audit Shows Machine Error Gave Extra Votes To Local Democrat; Determines No 'Fraud,' 'Bias'
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