Windham audit wraps up first week
May 15—PEMBROKE, N.H. — The first week of Windham's forensic election audit process ended Friday, with cameras watching every move of officials and volunteers to make sure the work is transparent and available for all to watch.
The audit got started last Tuesday at the Edward Cross Training Center in Pembroke, a facility chosen for its secure location.
The first day began with the arrival and state police escort of the four AccuVote machines from Windham. The sealed boxes containing the 10,006 ballots from the Nov. 3 Windham election followed. The remainder of the first day then had officials accepting, checking and verifying the materials.
The plans throughout the week included hand counting and numbering ballots, scanning the documents then running ballots through the four machines, with specific attention paid to matching numbers, ballot batches, machine counts and who was earmarked to handle the ballots.
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.
Senate Bill 43's signing last month by Gov. Chris Sununu last month paved the way for the audit.
Those leading the audit include Mark Lindeman chosen by Windham Selectmen to be the town's designee; Harri Hursti picked by the state and Philip Stark, jointly chosen by Windham and the state. All men introduced themselves earlier in the week and gave a list of their experience with election and audit work.
Elected officials representing different communities and political parties from around the region, including Derry and Londonderry, were also on board and trained as audit volunteers. The public also had access to the audit.
Hursti, Stark and Lindeman regularly commented on the process, explaining details about security measures.
"We want to make sure we are thorough," Stark said. "We are trying to be thorough."
An occasional jam affected machines, with one instance stalling 11 ballots from dropping into the proper spot, getting caught up instead in the chute. That led to those ballots getting counted twice. But officials then announced the error had been fixed and numbers continued to match up between ballots and machine logs.
By midday Friday, a round of applause broke out as Hursti announced some good news that one machine had processed 9,926 ballots and, along with 80 ballots that had to be hand counted and not run through the machine, the total came out to 10,006 — the number equal to Windham's total vote count on Nov. 3.
Once ballots were run through the machines and the tally tapes were run, the next phase got started later Friday afternoon where ballot results were read out loud. Teams of five handled this phase, with results being imported onto tally spreadsheets.
Throughout the audit, officials leading the teams will continue to answer questions submitted by the public. All documents and additional video of the audit will also be made available. The livestream can be found at www.doj.nh.gov.
