LHS CEO Jeff Silvestro knew for a fact that the creases in those mail-in ballots would create a misread or rejection. Every single politician involved in the meeting at issue knew it as well. And they did nothing.
He talks about folded ballots as part of the integrity of the process. Not machine failure but a failure of people tasked with ensuring election integrity missing or ignoring what appears to be the issue in Windham, and possibly most of New Hampshire, going back decades.
If there were about 400 misreads on the machines, consisting of about 300 overvotes killing as many valid votes for mostly Republicans, and about 100 invalid votes added to St. Laurent, the Windham discrepancy can be explained.
The amendment’s primary sponsor, Rep. Barbara Griffin, R-Goffstown, called the pending federal bill — titled the For the People Act— a “direct assault on the state of New Hampshire and its ability to conduct elections.”
“So the question here was, would the fold through [candidate] St. Laurent’s vote target be interpreted as a mark that would generate an overvote in that contest so that none of the four would be counted. And we found rates of generating overvotes from roughly 24 percent up to 72 percent,” auditor Philip Stark said.
“If the auditors are finding corruption with the machines in Windham, that can give us a lot of leverage to expand this audit beyond Windham into the state of New Hampshire, because these machines were used in 85 percent of the state and provided by the same vendor.”
When the auditors and AG’s office show a lack of concern for properly applying the tamper-proof tape, it leads to justifiable questions by the public regarding the legitimacy of the audit process.
The left in recent years has tried to undo this system—most notably with the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. So far, 15 states and the District of Columbia have signed on to the pact; it will go into effect with a few more states whose Electoral College votes total 75.
During a forum Tuesday evening, several critics of the Secretary of State’s office took aim at what they describe as a lack of security protocols in Vermont’s current mail-in voting system and also lamented a lack of media coverage on the topic.
I believe the audit for the “Windham Incident” has lost all credibility because there is no way for observers to observe in a meaningful manner. “Trust but verify” is difficult, and in many cases impossible.
At most, the audit could change the winner of Arizona, but it wouldn’t change the national outcome since Biden would retain enough electoral votes to win the presidency. In December, a state judge upheld the Arizona Senate’s authority to subpoena information from Maricopa.
While under S.15 voting would be very accessible, it would not be at all secure. We should therefore go back to the drawing board and come up with a plan that actually reflects this goal — truly accessible and secure elections.