Windham Democrat Raises Questions About NH's AccuVote Machines

WINDHAM, NH — New Hampshire's Ballot Law Commission voted Monday to uphold the recount of a Windham political race and directed state investigators to find out why there was a huge vote tally discrepancy between machine counts and hand recounts in the Rockingham District 7 state representative race on Nov. 3.

The commission met with Kristi St. Laurent, a candidate who lost in a recount earlier this month as well as her attorney, employees from the Secretary of State's Office, and Windham town officials and residents, who had both negative and positive things to say about the election and how it was handled, as well as its puzzling result.

St. Laurent, a Democrat, placed fifth for four seats, falling 24 votes short. It was the closest she had ever come to winning in three times running for representative and three times running for state Senate in what is considered to be a traditionally Republican town.

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The close vote led to an automatic hand recount and when that occurred, the spread grew from 24 to 420.

The recount showed St. Laurent recieving 99 votes too many while the four Republicans who won were all shorted between 297 and 303 votes each. Three other Democrats who trailed St. Laurent were shorted between 18 and 28 votes each.

Since the recounts, there has been a lot of confusion about how the optical scanning machine counts and hand recounts of paper ballots, which are considered to be the most accurate, because they are held in front of numerous witnesses, could be so wildly off. In all the time that there have been recounts of paper ballots counted by optical scanning machines in New Hampshire, more than 25 years, there has never been what St. Laurent described as a "massive and bizarre discrepancy between the results."

In most recounts, there are a handful of votes here and there that shift, usually added to a candidate's total, not subtracted. And the mistakes are not due to the machines — they are due to human error, with voters not filling in the oval properly or marking a ballot with an "X" or check mark, or discrepancies in how totals are entered by city and town officials. Never has there been a case where so many votes are taken away or added to totals while dozens of votes are added to totals, too, in such a manner as what happened in the Rockingham District 7 race.

St. Laurent said there were only two explanations: "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." That double counting, she added, "doesn’t explain to any degree why my count would drop by 99."

During the meeting, St. Laurent and Paul Twomey, a long-time attorney for Democrats when it comes to election matters, called for the commission to preserve and check all optical scanning machines used in New Hampshire by ordering local election officials to not erase data from the machine hard-drives until a full review could be made.

"The AccuVote OS system used in NH is the only system available to localities in NH because it is the only system approved by the Ballot Law Commission," she said. "It is believed to be the oldest system still in use in the country and press reports note that the software has not been supported by Microsoft with security fixes for many years."

A check of all the machines would determine there was no malfunction and restore confidence to the election process for Granite Staters, St. Laurent said. Election anomalies, including problems with software, glitches, human error, and allegations of fraud, have been reported across the country, with many, including Democrats in Congress and homeland security officials, worrying about the safety of the software and machines before the election. Also, if there were no problems with the machines, then it meant that in her race, there was a problem with the recount itself, she added.

During the meeting, Bill Gardner, the nation's longest serving secretary of state, who decided last week to run for another two-year term, said the discrepancy was like nothing he had ever seen before. Usually, he said, candidates end up with more votes but sometimes, fewer, too, but not like was seen in this case or all at once. Figuring out what happened, he said, was the "big question." However, he also stood by the recount.

Town officials, including Moderator Peter Griffith and Assistant Moderator Elizabeth Dunn, said there were no issues on Election Day. The town, including Town Clerk Nicole Bottai, contend the voting machines were accurate and the tabulations match the printout machine count, tally sheets, and checklists. After requesting copies of the data, Patch can confirm the printouts match tally sheets and other information.

Dunn said the counts came within three votes: 10,006 to 10,009. She added town officials also ran tests on the machine beforehand to confirm the accuracy of the counts. Griffith also said he was proud of the work the employees had done with the election and called it successful and he and others attended many trainings to ensure they are prepared for elections.

But one Windham resident, Ken Eyring, who spoke to a number of poll checkers and participated in the recount, disagreed. He said Republican poll watchers were kept away from absentee ballots and checklists — a distance where nearly nothing could be viewed or challenged, about 60 feet away, which did not allow for proper observation. During the recount, he added, after the ballots were initially eyed, separated, and counted, they were put back into the box, without anyone having the ability to do a follow-up count.

Gabe Toubia, another resident, was also a poll watcher and said, while he was not accusing anyone of fraud, he believed the machines could be manipulated and needed to be looked at. He also said he was not able to view absentee ballots and checklists because they were stationed about 20 feet from the viewing area.

Thomas Murray, another resident, also volunteered on Election Day, and was at a registration table. He had "serious concerns" about the discrepancies which was why he and town officials were calling on the New Hampshire Attorney General's Office to investigate the matter.

After deliberating, the commission requested to view 34 rejected absentee ballots — including 17 voters the town said voted in person, just to double-check them.

Orville "Bud" Fitch, an attorney with the Secretary of State's Office, showed the envelopes and information provided by the town to each commission member. Members did not view the actual ballots — in order to not make a determination or judgment based on how the rejected voter planned to cast their ballot. The ballots, however, were not enough to change the election result for St. Laurent, even though there was some disagreement on whether or not some of the ballots should have been rejected.

After voting to accept the recount results, the commission also voted to have the attorney general's office begin an investigation of what happened with this race and why there was such a wide, abnormal discrepancy between the hand recount and machine counts.

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