AG wins court approval to examine ballots in Laconia, Bedford

Courts have authorized the N.H. Attorney General’s Office to examine election materials from two municipalities where some votes from the 2020 general election went uncounted.

In Laconia, a court is permitting the state to open a sealed envelope containing an unknown number of ballots that were cast but apparently not tallied in several elections, including the 2020 general election, a lawyer with the Attorney General’s Office said in an email Monday.

And in a case out of Bedford, the office got court permission to open and tally the number of absentee ballots that were not counted in the same general election.

Election integrity continues to be a hot-button issue across New Hampshire and nationwide, inflamed by Donald Trump’s claims, without evidence, that voter fraud in many states stole the 2020 election from him.

Although election officials, including in the Granite State, express confidence that the vote count was fair, this fraud narrative spawned legislation across the country to revise election procedures. One bill that failed to advance this session in the N.H. Legislature would have required election officials across the state to count every ballot by hand.

Side compartment

Myles Matteson, the deputy general counsel for the N.H. Attorney General’s Office, said Laconia officials put the ballots found in that city in an envelope after finding them in a side compartment of a ballot box used for the city’s Ward 6.

The discovery was made as they got ready for the Nov. 2, 2021, municipal election, he said.

Matteson and N.H. Secretary of State David Scanlan say they don’t know how many ballots are involved in the Laconia incident. But there’s been no allegation that the misdirected ballots would have contained enough votes to swing any election.

Matteson said his office was notified of the matter on Dec. 6, but didn’t say by whom.

The small compartment is for ballots that could not be fed through the AccuVote ballot-counting machine, either because of a problem with the ballot or with the device, Matteson said.

At the end of the night, the ballots are supposed to be removed from the compartment and counted.

“While it appears that a number of ballots were cast but not counted by Laconia Ward 6 election officials on Nov. 3, 2020, and at other elections, important details that led to the error — and an accounting of officials’ attempts to reconcile the election returns — have yet to be determined,” Matteson said in a March 15 petition filed in Belknap Superior Court.

“A review of the Moderator’s worksheet does not show a reconciliation calculation identifying any number of missing ballots — meaning ballots cast by voters but not counted in the final ballot tally.”

Moderators typically compare, or reconcile, the number of ballots handed out to the number cast to make sure the two figures agree.

Scanlan said sometimes these two figures will differ slightly. For example, someone could get a ballot, decide not to vote and leave with it.

“But if there were 20 ballots in the side bin, that would show up and should signal there’s something wrong with the count,” he said.

Reached Tuesday, Laconia Ward 6 Moderator Tony Felch, who is also a Laconia city councilor, declined comment on the attorney general’s investigation.

The court gave Matteson approval to take Laconia’s Ward 6 election records, including sealed ballot boxes for the Nov. 3, 2020, general election, in order to investigate any efforts election officials made to reconcile the voting results.

The unsealing of the envelope containing the ballots will take place in a public setting where representatives from the city, the Attorney General’s Office and the Secretary of State’s Office may attend. The event has not yet been scheduled.

The state will not count the results from any of the ballots examined, but will record the total number of ballots recovered and the elections from which they originated.

Bedford absentees

Also on March 15, Matteson filed a petition with Hillsborough North Superior Court, to count absentee ballots not tallied in the November 2020 general election in Bedford. The public session to open these ballots has also not been scheduled yet.

“The purpose of the tally is to verify that the number of ballots — and the names on the affidavit envelopes — match the list created by Bedford election officials, to ensure that all voters whose ballots were not counted were properly notified,” he said in an emailed explanation of the court filing.

Bedford reported that an error by an election official resulted in 190 absentee ballots not being counted but that this would not have changed the outcome of any races.

In testimony to lawmakers this year, Scanlan has said the state’s election system, which largely depends on the AccuVote optical scan devices that tally ballots filled out by hand, is accurate and dependable.

Election recounts, which are done by hand, show minimal deviation from machine counts, he said. These voting machines are not connected to the Internet.

He has also said it’s important to build public confidence in the election system amid much misinformation and disinformation, and that elections, like anything else involving humans, are not likely to be completely free of mistakes.

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Rick Green can be reached at rgreen@keenesentinel.com or 603-355-8567.

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