Laconia election probe finds 179 uncounted ballots
Apr. 9—CONCORD — A state elections oversight investigation confirmed that 179 ballots cast in Laconia for 2020 primary and general elections in three wards went uncounted because the moderator placed them in a side compartment next to a voting machine.
The uncounted ballots were not enough to have changed the outcome of any election, according to Myles Matteson, deputy general counsel with the Election Law Unit of Attorney General John Formella's office.
Secretary of State David Scanlan said state election training sessions teach local officials to watch for "reconciliation issues," which indicate possible problems.
Ordinarily, these would have caused local officials to question results in the days following Laconia's elections, he said.
"The ballot counting device would not have recorded ballots placed in the side bin by the moderator," Scanlan said.
"At some point after the election, it should have been noticed that the number of names checked off on the checklist was significantly higher than the number of ballots that were counted."
Scanlan said these training sessions were not mandatory.
A Superior Court judge had ordered the review of the ballots cast in Laconia and Bedford, a town which had 190 absentee ballots in the November 2020 election set aside that were never counted.
Staff with Scanlan and Formella conducted the review last week in the State Archives Building in Concord.
In Laconia, the side compartment in the Ward 6 machine contained:
—Ward 6 general election: 58 ballots;
—Ward 1 general election: 1 ballot;
—Ward 6 Republican primary: 67 ballots;
—Ward 6 Democratic primary: 50 ballots and,
—Ward 4 Democratic primary: 3 ballots.
The ballot boxes were opened but, in keeping with the court's order, none of the "found" ballots were counted.
Second probe of Bedford
State officials said the review of Bedford ballots was consistent with an earlier investigation that the AG and secretary of state had done after the 2020 election.
This second review was ordered after a few uncounted ballots were found inside a voting machine before a special election for a House seat from that town last September.
Democrat Catherine Rombeau won that election against Republican and former state Rep. Linda Rea Camarota.
Roughly three-fourths of voters cast ballots in communities using New Hampshire's exclusive, electronic voting machine technology, AccuVote, which takes an optical scan of marks made on a paper ballot.
State election officials freely admit these machines are nearing the end of their useful life.
The state Ballot Law Commission has approved rules that eventually will allow other voting machine contractors to become licensed to serve cities and towns.
The ballot panel agreed to let Milford run an experiment by counting ballots from its town and school elections last March with a newer machine maintained by LHS Associates of Salem, the same vendor for AccuVote machines.
Lawmakers have considered many bills in the 2022 session, from getting rid of everything but paper ballots to conducting random audits after every election.
Sen. James Gray, R-Rochester, and Senate Democratic Leader Donna Soucy of Manchester have combined on the audit bill (SB 366) that would mandate the state spend at least $50,000 to buy a high-speed scanner that right after each election would audit 5% of returns statewide.
A House committee took testimony on the measure last week.
The Legislature seems to be getting behind less sweeping changes to tighten up security over voting machines and to standardize the reporting of tapes that summarize voting machine counts.
