Trump weighs in on upcoming Windham vote audit

May 7—WINDHAM — An upcoming forensic audit of Windham's vote tallies from the Nov. 3 election has caught the eye of the nation and a former president of the United States.

In a statement released Thursday, former President Donald Trump called out Windham by name, giving a pep talk ahead of the audit scheduled to start this month.

The audit comes after months of uncertainty due to a state recount of District 7 state representative votes from the Nov. 3 election that showed big discrepancies between a state recount and the town's numbers.

Town vote counts gave the four Republican candidates running for District 7 state representative the top tallies and the win, but only 24 votes originally separated GOP candidate Julius Soti from Democrat Kristi St. Laurent, who then requested the recount, held Nov. 12.

The state's recount number differed considerably from the Windham totals, giving GOP candidates nearly 300 more votes each, but St. Laurent lost 99.

And although President Joe Biden won New Hampshire and its four electoral votes, Republicans ruled general election day in Windham, giving top vote counts to Trump, and other GOP candidates on the ballot for state and national offices. More than 10,000 Windham ballots were cast.

On April 12, Sununu signed Senate Bill 43 into law, authorizing an audit of the District 7 race in Windham.

In his statement, Trump congratulated "the great Patriots of Windham, New Hampshire for their incredible fight to seek out the truth on the massive Election Fraud which took place in New Hampshire and the 2020 Presidential Election."

The former president continued by saying, "The spirit of transparency and justice is being displayed all over the country by media outlets which do not represent Fake News. People are watching in droves as these Patriots work tirelessly to reveal the real facts of the most tainted and corrupt Election in American history."

Not everyone agrees with Trump's assessment of the election, including some local officials and New Hampshire's Republican governor.

In his weekly news conference Thursday, Gov. Chris Sununu said New Hampshire does a good job with its elections, adding that doing an audit of "300 votes out of about 800,000 cast doesn't define massive voter fraud by any means."

For St. Laurent, she couldn't disagree more with the former president in his description of "massive election fraud" in New Hampshire.

"The Windham results represent the largest discrepancy between election day and recount numbers in New Hampshire history," St. Laurent said, adding she agrees with Sununu, who has described the situation as an isolated event deserving of an investigation.

St. Laurent said the town is working to firm up its list of 18 Windham audit observers and the teams are hard at work rounding out the procedures. The process could start early next week, she said.

Windham Board of Selectman Vice Chairman Heath Partington said there is no evidence of fraud or wrongdoing in the count discrepancy between the results in Windham on Nov. 3 and the recount that followed.

"Bear in mind that not even the most simple error checking has occurred since Nov. 12, as the ballot counting machines have been held in Windham and the ballots have been held in Concord since that time," Partington said. "We expect the transparent audit that will begin according to Senate Bill 43 will definitively determine what the issue or issues were and the resultant report will not only detail what occurred but also recommend any changes required to eliminate the same issue from occurring again."

Finding out what happened is the goal, Windham Town Clerk Nicole Bottai said, adding her office has fielded many calls, emails, and Right-to-Know requests from all over the state and nation.

Bottai is not surprised Windham made national news.

"It doesn't surprise me it's reached this point, because of the political climate we've reached," she said. "We want to get closure. We want to put it to rest and get to the bottom of it. We want to find out the answers."

Windham's four AccuVote machines will be examined as part of the audit. All ballots will be run through all the machines. There will also be a hand count.

"Once the report is complete, Windham voters will have the answers they deserve," St. Laurent said. "There will be suggested practices to help prevent this from happening again in the future. All of New Hampshire will be able to view the results and reports and any necessary responses by the Legislature or Secretary of State to reaffirm confidence in New Hampshire elections."

The audit is scheduled to be held at the Edward Cross Training Center, 722 Riverwood Drive in Pembroke, and will be livestreamed at www.doj.gov.