State probing case of ballots found in Laconia counting machine

As officials in Laconia prepared for the Sept. 14 municipal primary, they made a startling discovery — ballots from the general election held 10 months earlier.

Myles Matteson, deputy general counsel for the attorney general, said his office has opened an investigation into why the ballots were left in a collection box connected to an AccuVote ballot-counting device.

He didn’t say who notified his office of the incident on Dec. 6, nearly three months after the ballots were found.

This latest probe comes on the heels of previous investigations by Matteson’s office after some absentee ballots cast last year weren’t counted in Bedford, Merrimack and Nottingham.

Heightened concerns over election integrity arose after former President Donald Trump claimed without evidence that the 2020 election was stolen from him. In New Hampshire, Republican lawmakers have introduced a bill for the session starting next month that would outlaw ballot-counting devices and require that all ballots be counted by hand.

Backers say this would improve accuracy in the system, and the potential vote-counting delay and additional expense would be worth it. Others, including Rep. Jim Creighton, R-Antrim, question whether the monumental task of counting every ballot by hand would be practical, especially in populous areas.

“I’m still considering it, but I’m not one to believe in election-machine conspiracies,” he said. “It’s hard to do hand counting, and I’m not sold it’s the right way to go.”

Laconia ballots

Matteson said the number of ballots involved in Laconia was “unknown,” but he also said there weren’t enough to change the election results.

He said more details will come out when his office compiles and releases a public report.

Under state election requirements, all ballots are to be tallied and removed from ballot collection bins. The ballots are then required to be sealed in boxes and stored away safely so they’re available if needed for a recount.

Like Keene and the majority of towns and cities in New Hampshire, Laconia uses an AccuVote optical scan device to count ballots. The voter makes choices on the ballot by filling in ovals, inserts the ballot into the slot in the device, and the ballot then drops into the attached collection box.

Laconia City Clerk Cheryl Hebert said the city uses an option in the ballot-counting system that allows some ballots to be diverted to a special partitioned section of the box.

Ballots containing write-in votes, or where the ovals aren’t filled out, can be diverted in this way. (Some voters mistakenly underline or circle a candidate’s name rather than fill in the oval.)

Hebert referred to the Attorney General’s Office questions about whether this diversion arrangement could have led to some ballots being overlooked and not tabulated. Matteson declined to comment.

Hebert said some election officials remove the partition and have all the ballots go to the same place in the ballot collection box for review by an election official. In any case, ballots with write-in votes, or where ovals aren’t marked correctly, need to be reviewed by an election worker.

Absentee issues

In Bedford, Merrimack and Nottingham, some absentee ballots in the 2020 general election were submitted by election day but were not counted, according to Matteson.

An election official error resulted in 190 absentee ballots not being counted in Bedford, the Attorney General’s Office found, although this would not have changed the outcome of any races.

Three absentee ballots in Merrimack and three absentee ballots in Nottingham also didn’t get tallied, according to the AG’s office.

A total of 814,000 votes were cast in last year’s presidential election, and 80 percent of the ballots were counted by optical scan machines, according to the N.H. secretary of state’s office.

In addition to the state legislation that would require votes to be counted by hand are proposals to strengthen enforcement of election law, alter existing residency requirements, change the voter ID process and seek election audits.

Secretary of State William Gardner said the optical scan system is accurate and has a good track record. He also said extensive training was held for election officials before the general election on various issues, including proper ballot handling.

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Rick Green can be reached at rgreen@keenesentinel.com.

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