House Election Law Committee approves detailed forensic audit of Windham election results

House Election Law Committee approves detailed forensic audit of Windham election results
Rewritten bill heads to full House, and if approved, back to Senate
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Updated: 3:55 AM EST Mar 11, 2021
Rewritten bill heads to full House, and if approved, back to Senate
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Updated: 3:55 AM EST Mar 11, 2021
(New Hampshire Primary Source is a regular feature of WMUR's political coverage.)FORENSIC AUDIT APPROVED. The House Election Law Committee on Wednesday approved and sent to the full House legislation outlining a full, detailed forensic audit by a team of experts of the Nov. 3 election results in the town of Windham.(This report has been updated since it originally posted early Thursday morning.) The panel on a 20-0 vote signed off on a completely rewritten Senate Bill 43.Responding to pleas from Windham residents, and supported by Secretary of State William Gardner, the bill now direct the performance of an audit of the ballot counting machines and their memory cards and the hand tabulations of ballot for the election in the southern New Hampshire community.The bill calls for the formation of a “forensic election audit team” of three people – one designated by the town, one designated jointly by the secretary of state and attorney general and one person selected jointly the other entities. These may well be national experts.It is the latest development to address a controversy that arose after a recount of the Rockingham District 7 House seat showed four of eight candidates each receiving an additional 300 votes and three others with much smaller increases more typical of a recount, while the candidate who requested the recount, Democrat Kristi St. Laurent, losing 99 votes. St. Laurent appealed to the Ballot Law Commission, which upheld the results of the recount in certifying the four people seated by the House, but requested an investigation by the attorney general's office, which has now been undertaken.The state Senate passed its version of Senate Bill 43 on a vote of 24-0 on Feb. 18.At a recent public meeting on the election, held in Windham, the idea of employing a panel of national experts to perform the forensic audit was broached.Meeting Wednesday, the House Election Law Committee reviewed and approved a rewritten bill put forward by Rep. Maureen Mooney, R-Merrimack.Mooney said the amendment “is based on the people of Windham and the people throughout the state."“It’s clear that Senate Bill 43 must pass, as questions need to be answered,” Mooney said. “This amendment carefully adds items suggested by Windham.”“The audit’s purpose is to generate a report as to whether the machine counting devices and memory cards functioned properly on Nov. 3, whether the number of ballots tallied by hand in Windham on election night and those tallied in a recount is the same as the ballots cast,” Mooney said.She noted that the audit is not a recount and its results would not alter the official outcome of the state representatives race.“I urge all of my colleagues on this very important bill, for Windham, for New Hampshire, to support 'ought-to-pass.'”Under the new bill, the audit team would be directed to determine whether the vote counting machines and memory cards functioned properly and whether the number of ballots counted by hand in Windham and those counted by the secretary of state during the recount on Nov. 12 were the same as the number of ballots cast.For comparison purposes, the team will hand count the ballots cast in the race for governor and U.S. senator, as well as for state representatives. The audit will take place outside of Windham and not where the secretary of state normally performs recounts, the bill says.Designated members of the public would observe the audit, and it would be livestreamed and recorded.The audit team is directed in the bill to produce a report within 45 days of the audit on whether the ballot machines and memory cards accurately counted the ballots and whether the hand counting procedures followed by the town of Windham and the recounting procedures followed by the secretary of state “may have contributed to the variances reported.”The report would recommend “what improvements to the machine processing and tabulation processes might be considered in the future,” and the report would be made public.The secretary of state and attorney general would then issue their own report to the House, Senate and Windham Select Board. The Ballot Law Commission would issue a separate report.The bill now goes to the House floor and when ultimately passed by the House, back to the Senate to approve or reject, or alter, the changes to the bill it passed.“There has been a huge focus by some to point the finger at the machines, at times almost to the exclusion of considering the recount as a potential source of the discrepancy,” St. Laurent wrote in an email to New Hampshire Primary Source on Thursday morning, after this report initially appeared. “I have been pushing for consideration of all potential sources. I was glad to see that the amended bill out of the Election Law Committee was more thorough than the original Senate Bill 43 and that it included an audit of the hand count of the state representative race.”“While 85 percent of towns use the machines like Windham's, 100 percent of New Hampshire towns and candidates have the recourse of a recount in the event of a close election,” St. Laurent wrote.“Voters and candidates need to have confidence in the entire voting process and I think the audit as amended will go a long way in restoring that.”

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