Friday marks day four of the forensic audit in Windham, NH. Day three came to a close, leaving election integrity advocates, once again, with mounting concerns over the "chaotic" process and with a burgeoning list of unanswered questions, including why a representative from Dominion Voting Systems was at the audit facility. As previously reported, Senate Bill 43 (SB43) gives the team of three auditors until May 27 to complete the investigation of the 2020 election results for four state House seats after discovering a significant and unexplainable discrepancy during a Nov. 12 recount.
Disturbed over learning the 24-hour live stream video of the audit was turned off for two hours Wednesday night, Thursday got started with Harri Hursti, the auditor selected by Secretary of State Bill Gardner and Attorney General John M. Formella, attempting to explain, unsuccessfully, what happened. At the suggestion of Senator Bob Giuda, concerned resident Lisa Mazur spent the day in Pembroke, NH, at the Edward Cross Training Center audit location and shared a video (below) of Hursti's hard-to-follow explanation.
In a state that is no stranger to voter fraud, uncertainty over ballot boxes received from the SoS's office for the audit also led to skepticism on Thursday. Mazur questioned Phillip Stark, the third auditor chosen jointly by the Board of Selectmen and the SoS and AG, about the broken chain of custody with the ballot boxes. After the November recount in Windham, twenty-two boxes of ballots were sent back to the SoS. For the current forensic audit, 26 boxes were received from the SoS, leaving four boxes with "unknown materials." Mazur spoke with the town clerk, who indicated she "wasn't super concerned about two of the boxes, but she would like to know what is in the other two." One of the boxes allegedly contains absentee ballot envelopes. Stark explained the dilemma further, stating:
"We have the log, the custody log for all of the materials and inventory, and probably after we do the seals check, we will turn to doing that with the Windham boxes. There are two containers that, in some sense, we shouldn't have received as part of this process, and we don't know what's in them yet. We do know that it's not the ballots; those are all separate and accounted for."
Towards the end of the day, Mazur and Ken Eyring, who said he has zero confidence in the process right now, commented that the live stream cameras are still a problem, prohibiting any transparent and integrity-driven assurances in the audit process. Because of the inadequate cameras, ballots are being handled off-camera, and Eyring expressed concern over "comments that are made to provide plausible deniability, but we're not buying any of it." Offering a further explanation of his disappointment in the audit so far, Erying added:
"The proceedings so far go against the intent of the bill, which is to have full transparency, and to assure people that the process is being handled with due diligence. And none of that seems to be happening. This is about a verifiable process and we don't have that right now. With the way this whole process is being handled, it is impossible to ensure that no human error has taken place."
In perhaps the most startling discovery of the day, Thursday also exposed that a representative from LHS Associates was present in the audit room all day, often conversing with Assistant AG Anne Edwards, who previously stated her office does not have the technical capabilities to live stream with any more transparency than its doing now, which is lacking and insufficient. LHS, led by Jeff Silvestro (son of LHS founder John Silvestro), represents Dominion Voting Systems and has had for decades an exclusive contract to supply and program all Dominion Accu-Vote machines used in New Hampshire's elections, as well as elections across New England.
