What could possibly go wrong with millions of “Mail In Ballots”? How about if the “Fold Line” cast a vote?
New Hampshire Audit Identifies Damning Problem; Scan Counts Only 28% of Test Ballots for GOP Candidates
Jack Davis
May 23, 2021 at 1:10pmAn election audit in a New Hampshire town may have discovered why initial results were so far at variance from those revealed in a follow-up hand count.
The audit was triggered because of what happened to Democratic state House candidate Kristi St. Laurent. As of election night, she was short by 24 votes of winning one of the four seats of for grabs in Windham, a town of 10,000.But when the recount was held, she was 420 votes short.
Gee, a Democrat calls for a recount / audit and NOBODY objects. Didn’t make the news. No hoard of DNC Lawyers sent to stop it. Didn’t even hear about it.
News
News
New Hampshire Audit Identifies Damning Problem; Scan Counts Only 28% of Test Ballots for GOP CandidatesJack Davis
May 23, 2021 at 1:10pmAn election audit in a New Hampshire town may have discovered why initial results were so far at variance from those revealed in a follow-up hand count.
The audit was triggered because of what happened to Democratic state House candidate Kristi St. Laurent. As of election night, she was short by 24 votes of winning one of the four seats of for grabs in Windham, a town of 10,000.
But when the recount was held, she was 420 votes short.
St. Laurent’s initial total had been overcounted by about 99 votes according to the recount, while the Republicans who finished ahead of her were undercounted in the initial tally.
The audit was held to determine why the initial results were so far off.
The auditors currently suspect that fold lines in the ballots being scanned fooled the machine into thinking that a candidate whose name appeared on a fold line received a vote.
As that candidate was most often the Democrat, they would get an uncast vote as long as it didn’t invalidate the ballot. If a person voted “Straight Republican”, then that would add a bogus vote for the Democrat, and invalidate the ballot as an “overvote”. Heads Democrat wins, Tails Republican loses…
[…]
The auditors tried to explain what happened in a series of tweets, noting one instance that showed a discrepancy between what was cast and what was counted, in which only 28 percent of the Republican votes cast were recorded accurately.
The 28% sounds huge, but do note the absolute number is small. It is unclear how widespread such an “error” will be, or what the absolute size of the problem will be. What I want to know is how many of these machines are in use Nation Wide.
The article then embeds some “tweets” from the auditors. I’m going to selectively quote from them:
WindhamNHAuditors
@WAuditors
·
May 22
The fold effect is large enough to account for discrepancies, but might not be all that’s going on. 75 folded ballots voted straight Republican. Only 48 votes recorded for them. Folds generated overvotes. This is machine used on Election Day 4 most absentee ballots #NHPolitics
So used for (they use “4”) absentee ballots. You would think that was the major error batch. But Noooo….
WindhamNHAuditors
@WAuditors
The “school” machine has even more dramatic problem: counted only 28% of the 75 votes for each R candidate in this contest. #NHPolitics
So then they make up a dummy batch and test the scanners:
WindhamNHAuditors
@WAuditors
·
May 22
We now have experimental confirmation that if the contest is undervoted, a fold through a vote target can create a vote. None of the 65 ballots was marked for St. Laurent, but the machines interpreted 25 of the folds as votes for her. #NHPolitics
This was a race with a “pick one of N” entry. The “undervoted” means the person picked “less than N” so the fold got counted as a valid vote. They confirmed this with a test batch.
And if all N were picked, then the fold line might count as a vote for the person who was on that line if they were picked by the voter, or count as the N+1 vote (“overvote”) and invalidate the ballot if the voter voted “straight republican” as the name on that line was the Democrat.
It isn’t clear how this would act in a “pick one” case, but I can guess. The fold line still gets a vote, so it either picks the person on the line (who was the valid vote) or it “overvotes” the ballot if the voter picked the other candidate and either pitches it outright or sends it to “ajudication” (i.e. lets the poll worker pick the vote).
[…]
The audit is not complete, but if the initial conclusion is correct, it could have a ripple effect across the state.“Throughout New Hampshire, you’re using the same voting machines, the AccuVote, and in principle, it could be an issue,” Stark told WMUR, which is based in Manchester, the state’s largest city.
So my question is just what is the total usage of “AccuVote” machines? EVERY State where they are in use needs to do a 100% audit or else the votes in those States are invalid. We’ve shown the machines are grossly error prone on folded ballots.
Previous Study on AccuVote Voting Machines Like Those Used in New Hampshire Found Serious Flaws and Ability to Steal Votes with Little Risk of Detection
By Jim Hoft
Published February 15, 2021 at 4:41pm[…]
Dominion Voting Systems owns the intellectual property of the AccuVote machines used in New Hampshire.This should not be a surprise.
A previous study found that the Diebold AccuVote-TS Voting Machines are highly unreliable and susceptible to fraud.
OK…. So Dominion, who are the largest / market leader IIRC, owns Diebold (who IIRC was 2nd place until bought by Dominion) who hold the “AccuVote” brand name.
I think this means that the machines are used in a whole lot of States, perhaps even most States.
Though this article implies they are “old” and may have newer (perhaps easier to hack remotely?) machines installed (as we’ve already seen that the newer Dominion machines are remote-hackable per other articles in the press).
In New Hampshire, the AccuVote optical scanners used in all communities that have voting machines are an “older technology” and each moderator uses the device’s results tape, at the end of the night, to reveal the results, on a paper “Return of Votes” form. AccuVote devices have been used for more than a quarter of a century in the state and are the only devices approved by the Ballot Law Commission.
“The device was originally manufactured by Unisys, then by Global Elections Systems Inc., which are no longer in business,” Yen said. “The device used in New Hampshire is no longer being manufactured. Dominion (Voting Systems) owns the intellectual property of the AccuVote and its related election management system but does not manufacture the device.”
In the audit in Antrim County we saw that a minor variation in the ballot description (typed by the clerk configuring the machine to match the ballot) or a misprinted ballot can alter the vote count. Meaning anyone who knew that could “diddle the vote” at either the printer or configuration time.
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2020/12/17/asog-dominion-report-a-review/
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2020/12/18/asog-dominion-report-review-part-2/
Here we see that just choosing which name gets printed on the “most likely fold line” for mail in ballots will let you “diddle the vote”.
How many more ways are there to screw up / fool / “diddle” the vote are there? Who knew about them in advance? (Test runs for validation ought to have “instructed” the folks setting up these machines…)
What is absolutely clear is that this vote across the entire nation is screwed up. Due to using faulty machinery, bad software (configurations / ability to “adjudicate” batches at whim), massive mail in ballots to trigger those fold errors, and more.
This 2020 election is invalid. A full audit and / or re-vote is the only way to make it right.
Musings from the Chiefio 
“This 2020 election is invalid. A full audit and / or re-vote is the only way to make it right.
One might think that with voting being an ancient process getting it right would have been possible a long time ago. One would be wrong.
I’ll guess there will be improvements, but at least at the National level there will not be a re-vote, nor will it be invalidated. Who could do that?
@N&J H – “Who could do that?”
Good question, since States run the elections and then send Electors for the Federal level decision.
The Supremes punted (g#blank$%!-ity-blank bought and paid for Ju$tice$).
I saw a quote today from Solzhinitzen. Basically it went – “they lie, we know they lie, they know we know they lie, and we know they know that we know they lied. But they lie anyway.’
I think that applies to those trying to bury the election steal.