No Fraud Found in New Hampshire Election as 2020 Election Conspiracy Theories Persist

There is no evidence of fraud found in a controversial New Hampshire election, according to auditors on Thursday. Auditors probing into the election in Windham think a folding machine used by the town to attempt to accommodate the number of absentee ballots in the November election is responsible for mistakenly adding to vote counts for four legislative seat candidates.

Outside a nondescript building and guarded 24/7 by state troopers, Windham's election audit leaders fielded questions on the reason behind the livestream briefly failing, the type of tape they are using to seal boxes, and whether any ballot boxes have gone missing. Unlike audits of the 2020 presidential election results that have emerged in Georgia and Arizona, New Hampshire's audit arose from a palpable gap in vote tallies in a race for state representative.

The audit was focused on a state representative race. It began after the losing candidate requested a recount in November 2020, which displayed different vote totals for the candidates.

According to Harri Hursti, one member of the three-person team leading the audit, "The original count, the recount, nothing has ever been changing who gets elected. This is an exercise of finding what caused the error, but the four winners have all, from day one, remained to be the same four winners. This has never threatened that. And, again, if there would have been a widespread fraud, which would have been uncovered [in] this, it would have come out. There was none," reported Washington Examiner.

Machine Used to Fold Absentee Ballots

New Hampshire used the machine to fold the absentee ballots prior to sending them to voters. Upon their return, the ballots were fed into a counting machine. Due to the folds on a number of ballots going through a Democrat's name, either a vote was wrongly given to the Democrat or the ballot was not counted, reported US News.

According to auditors, their early assessment reveals no sign of fraud. It instead points to human errors that they do not think are prevalent statewide. The bipartisan audit has become a breaking point in this small town. A number of conservatives are clinging to allegations that the issue in Windham could point to wider election integrity problems throughout New Hampshire or outside the town, reported CNN.

The auditors have speculated that ballot folds could be to blame for errors. According to Philip Stark, another member of the three-person audit team, if a person voted for all four Republican candidates and the ballot happened to have its fold line going through St. Laurent's target, then that could be interpreted by the machines as an overvote. This would then subtract votes from each of such Republican candidates.

Audit Slated to Finish on Thursday

The audit is mandated by the legislature and commenced earlier this May. It is slated to end on Thursday.

The audit was called by lawmakers from both parties following a recount requested by a losing Democratic candidate in one of the legislative races displaying Republicans receiving hundreds of more votes than were initially counted. No matter what findings the audit detects, the results would not change.