Auditors investigating a controversial New Hampshire election believe a machine used by the town of Windham to accommodate the numbers of absentee ballots is responsible for mistakenly adding to vote counts for Democratic candidates in four legislative races.
The town used the machine to fold the absentee ballots before sending them to voters. After they were returned, the ballots were fed into a counting machine. Because the folds on some ballots went through a Democrat’s name, the ballot was either not counted or a vote was wrongly given to the Democrat.
“We found no evidence of fraud or political bias,” Mark Lindeman, one of the three auditors and the acting co-director of Verified Voting, a nonpartisan organization, said.
The audit, mandated by the state Legislature and started earlier this month, was set to finish Thursday and has drawn the attention of former President Donald Trump.
It was called by lawmakers from both parties after a recount requested by a losing Democratic candidate showed Republicans getting hundreds more votes than were originally counted.
No matter the audit findings, the results of the election won’t change.
Kristi St. Laurent, the losing Democratic candidate who requested the recount, was watching the audit wrap up Thursday at the Edward Cross Training Center in Pembroke.
