Sununu: State Won't Let Windham Voting Irregularity 'Slip By'

CONCORD, NH — Pressure is mounting in the state of New Hampshire that a review of the recount of a Windham state representative race that led to what one person described as a "massive, bizarre discrepancy," may not be enough to find out what happened since it is not a full, transparent investigation.

On Nov. 3, 2020, Kristi St. Laurent, a Democrat running for one of four seats to represent Rockingham District 7, came within 24 votes of winning, prompting a recount of the ballots.

A recount, however, found that four AccuVote optical scanning voting machines, used in the state for more than two decades, shorted between 297 and 303 votes of four Republican candidates. St. Laurent, it turned out, had 99 more votes than were cast for her. Three other Democrats were shorted between 18 and 28 votes.

The recount was observed by dozens of people and everyone was mystified by the results.

State law only allows for a single recount of a political race, to determine a winner, so, St. Laurent challenged the results at the state's bipartisan Ballot Law Commission.

The commission, ultimately, accepted the results of the recount.

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However, after hearing testimony from town election officials, residents, St. Laurent, and others, the commission also requested the New Hampshire Attorney General's Office to investigate the matter.

Nicholas Chong Yen, an assistant attorney general who heads up the election unit, requested materials from the town and began reviewing the matter in January. But he was quick to say that his review was not an investigation.

The Gateway Pundit, a conservative news website, caught onto the issue and gave it national attention since the intellectual property of the machines in New Hampshire is owned by Dominion Voting Systems. State Sen. Bob Giuda (R-Warren), a former FBI agent, called the lack of an investigation deeply troubling. Ken Eyring, a blogger at GraniteGrok.com and a Windham resident, as well as others, are calling for a full, thorough, and transparent investigation — including an accounting of the number of ballots cast in the community, an audit of the software of all four voting machines, and at least one other hand recount in another race, to see if there were other problems.

There are no laws or provisions to provide for this type of investigation which is prompting many to urge the attorney general's office and Gov. Chris Sununu to take more specific action.

During Thursday's coronavirus press conference, Sununu was asked if he would issue an executive order calling for an investigation. The governor did not answer the question directly. But, he said, there was a bill in the state Senate to allow for future checks of the state's optical voting machines, calling the proposal, "appropriate steps to take." He also confirmed the attorney general's office was reviewing the matter and that report will be available soon.

"I think the state is coming at it from a couple of different angles," Sununu said.

The only silver lining, he said, was that New Hampshire's discrepancy was small in comparison to some states investigating hundreds of thousands of ballots.

"The fact that we can get granular and focus on one or maybe two machines, or hand-counting 300 individual votes, I think that speaks to the immense integrity of our system," he said. "And the incredible accuracy. Through all of the different communities in the state, we're talking about one or two machines in one community."

And, Sununu added, "We're not going to let that slip by. We're going to attack it, at all levels, and make sure that we really get to the root of the problem. And make sure that, even though it may have been a small problem, that it isn't systematic across anything."

Sununu said it should reassure residents that there is a "great system in place to deal with these issues."

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