Today marks day eight of the forensic audit in Windham, NH, which is scheduled to be completed by May 27. Windham constituents remain frustrated. Their requests for transparency continue to be largely ignored by the Attorney General's office, with live stream cameras providing a very limited view of the audit proceedings. As it comes to light that "machine #2" (out of four) favors democratic party candidates, questions persist surrounding Dominion Voting Systems rep and LHS President Jeff Silvestro's presence at the audit.
As previously reported, on Nov. 3, Republicans swept all four of Windham's state representative seats. One Democrat, Kristi St. Laurent, fell short by just 24 votes and requested a recount. During the Nov. 12 recount, the margin between St. Laurent and the Republican candidates shifted significantly. The vote totals for all Republican candidates in that race increased by nearly 300, while St. Laurent's vote count decreased by almost 100.
New Hampshire, a state which prides itself as being the first primary in the campaign season, received a total of sixty-three donations from the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) in their "2020 Elections COVID-19 Grants." Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan donated at least $350 million to CTCL in the months leading up to the 2020 election. CTCL then distributed the funds in the form of grants to numerous jurisdictions throughout the United States so they could hire additional staff, purchase mail-in ballot processing equipment, and other measures they considered essential to manage the election amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to NH Assistant Attorney General Anne Edwards, Silvestro was invited by the three auditors—Harri Hursti, Phillip Stark, and Mark Lindeman—in the event instructions were needed for Windham's four aging Diebold ES2000 Model A Voting Machines. As previously reported by UncoverDC, LHS Associates has an exclusive contract to maintain New Hampshire's voting machines. Contradicting the Assistant AG, in an interview with local Lisa Mazur, auditor Stark indicated he did not know why Silvestro was at the audit each day speaking to people near the voting machines.
Londonderry, NH Town Clerk Sherry Farrell has been helping with the audit this week, writing, "this week I had the honor of being selected as a volunteer election official to assist with conducting the audit on the Windham, Nov. 3 general election." A big fan of Harri Hursti, Farrell shared her excitement of being in the same room with him, professing, "[I] never thought in my wildest dreams I would have an opportunity to work with such an election mind, such an election expert." Initially confused about a recount and an audit, Farrell explained the difference:
According to Verified Voting and other sources on Google, a recount is conducted in response to an election race that is considered to be very close or that could be in question.
Having completed the machine count last week, the auditors are currently conducting a hand count of the ballots and will begin the forensic audit of the machines next. On Monday, auditor Mark Lindeman urged the volunteers to carefully examine ballots with fold lines in them, claiming the voting machines counted some of them as votes. He added, "In some cases, fold lines are being interpreted by the scanners as valid votes. That's something we especially want to encourage to look for at the table."
An issue throughout the audit has been the memory cards in Windham's four voting machines. The cards are wiped clean for every election, permanently erasing the previous election data on them in preparation for the next election. Emphasizing the importance of preserving the evidence on the memory cards for the current forensic audit, auditor Harri Hursti has stated it is impossible to make a copy of them.
During a Mar. 1, 2021 Board of Selectmen meeting, which Jeff Silvestro attended, a specific conversation took place about making a copy of the memory cards before the forensic audit, with the minutes revealing, "Discussion ensued in that the memory cards can be copied, and that the State intends to do so in order keep the originals in their current state."
Screenshot/Windham Board of Selectmen Minutes, March 1, 2021
NH Voter Integrity Group on Facebook, May 19, 2021, "This proves the machines from 11/3 TOOK votes from these candidates redistributing them into the “blank account” and even GAVE extra votes to Kristi ONLY. Here is your proof, my friends. I’ll go on live in a bit to explain into further detail. Hursti should have never ever touched that card. Shame on him. I can’t believe the blanks net out to the distributed numbers that were off. This is a big deal, my friends."
With the machine count of the audit now complete, a peculiar pattern became apparent with one of Windham's four voting machines. "Machine two" repeatedly showed favoritism towards Democratic candidates. Dr. David Strang, who was pivotal in prompting the forensic audit in Windham, recently stated at least two other towns in New Hampshire with voting machines producing the same results as "machine two." According to Dr. Strang, those voting machines were regularly fed the most ballots. Strang commented:
"Winning an election shouldn't depend on your supporters inserting their ballots into the "right" machine, but rather, any machine, as they should all count ballots the same. Well, that's not what happened on Nov. 3rd in Windham. NH. The numbers coming from the legislatively-ordered audit in that NH town confirm what the concerned citizens of NH have claimed all along. Our machines are not accurate and cannot be trusted to accurately count our votes."
Increasingly, Windham voters have declared that a hand-count of the ballots is the only way to ensure accuracy. Dr. Strang agrees, remarking, "The fact that these machines do not agree with each other and have such a wide variation amongst the four just for the repeat audit machine count alone, means that the hand recount totals from Nov. 12th are likely to be the only accurate tally."
Members of the Government Integrity Project are taking matters into their own hands. For over two months, they have been gathering copies of Nov. 3rd election tapes from towns across New Hampshire and conducting their own "citizen's audit," which, according to Lisa Mazur, should be finished in the next few weeks, comparing totals against registered voters and other accessible data.
The Government Integrity Project, a movement made up of New Hampshire voters who want to "protect and restore Liberties as defined in our Country's Founding Documents," has its official launch this Saturday, May 22. The locally promoted "official launch" will provide the latest update on the forensic audit in Windham from the group's founders and long-time Windham residents Ken Eyring and Tom Murray, as well Senator Bob Giuda and Marilyn Todd, of the NH Voter Integrity Group.
On Thursday, auditor Philip Stark announced that the scheduled audit day for the upcoming weekend had been changed from Sunday, May 23 to Saturday, May 22, from 9 am - 6 pm. With the crucial forensic audit of the machines next on the agenda, several Windham audit observers who planned to attend the official launch of the Government Integrity Project on Saturday and the audit on Sunday are re-thinking their plans and questioning the motive behind the date change.
