A plot of coincidences: Ballots were the source of electoral discrepancies in Windham

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An anomaly in Windham’s 2020 election results attracted national attention and plenty of conspiracy theories, but listeners found the real explanation to be much simpler: The problem stems from misplaced covers in its ballots. postal vote.

Listeners investigating discrepancies in a local legislative race released a report today concluding that the folding lines on the ballots were the main cause of a roughly 400-point gap in the total vote.

One of the listeners was Harri Hursti, an internationally renowned electoral security expert and ethical hacker. He joined All Things Considered host Peter Biello to share his findings.

Listen to the entire interview.

Hurstis takeaways:

The machine Windham used to prepare its ballots last fall was not properly calibrated and was folding the ballots in the wrong place. The ballots were designed to be folded with creases between the ballot bubbles, but in Windham the crease overlapped with one of the bubbles of a candidate representing the state, disrupting the vote totals when these ballots were fed into scanners to be counted on election night. . There was no evidence of electoral fraud or other election tampering. Hursti says the use of paper ballots in New Hampshire makes their elections generally safer. While New Hampshire does not routinely audit its election results, it is well positioned to build on what it learned from the Windham Inquiry to implement a robust audit system that limits the risk to the to come up. Hursti believes the state should be ready to audit its elections by 2022.

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Transcription:

Peter Biello: Everything is considered on NHPR, I’m Peter Biello. Last year’s election went well in New Hampshire, with the exception of one lingering question: why has the vote totals in the Windham state representative race changed? so radically between election night and a state recount a week later? We now have an answer to this question. A team of auditors recently completed an investigation. One of those investigators is here now to share what he has learned. Harri Hursti is an internationally renowned ethical hacker and electoral security expert. Harri, thank you very much for speaking with me.

Harri Hursti: Thank you for having me.

Peter Biello: Your audit found that the “root cause” of the discrepancies at Windham was related to the way the mail ballots were folded. Can you tell us a little more about this and why it made such a big difference in the total votes?

Harri Hursti: So the folding itself is a function here where it’s always about what kind of paper you use, how it folds, and in this case it’s also the folder. We discovered that the folding machine, which was rented by the Town of Windham for other purposes, not for elections, when it was in use, did not set the machine to fold it where the good place to fold it. And the right place is a printer-made scoring line. The other part [that] was a contributing factor is also that the bending machine was probably slightly broken, so that didn’t make the bend horizontal, it may be slightly diagonal, and that could be a contributing factor. Why was it not noticed? Because if the line had been completely horizontal, it would probably have damaged the timing marks in a certain percentage of the paper, causing the ballots to be rejected by the voting machines. It was a plot of coincidences. So many things had to go wrong for this anomaly to happen.

Peter Biello: OK, and just to be clear, your team couldn’t find any evidence of fraud, tampering, or malicious activity in Windham, did they?

Harri Hursti: We did not find any type of malicious activity. We have done a thorough investigation. We watched [at] every possible claim, every possible theory. We did not find anything [that] would be malicious or have a political bias. And I want to point out here that New Hampshire uses a principle called ballot rotation. Thus, no place on a ballot paper has political bias because political parties between jurisdictions are organized at random. In addition, if the same candidates are in polls from more than one jurisdiction, the orders of candidates are randomly arranged. So even if it would be elsewhere, it would have no political bias because everything is random between jurisdictions.

Peter Biello: In other words, candidates for a particular office are not always listed alphabetically by last name, they are turned on, and voting machines, when they count, if properly calibrated, can determine the candidate’s whereabouts and calculate those votes appropriately. It’s what you say ?

Harri Hursti: Right.

Peter Biello: Regarding the folding problem at Windham, do you have any reason to believe that this problem was widespread?

Harri Hursti: We tried to find out if there were any other places using voting machines and volunteers, that we had to rely on and assist with this audit – they were all sworn election officials in non-partisan offices. – and we were immediately asking everyone: “Do you know of any other place using the voting machine?” And we couldn’t [find] any place they would use a folder.

Peter Biello: Despite all this mystery surrounding Windham’s vote totals, the actual cause of this problem seems surprisingly simple. It all depends on how they were folded in these machines. In your opinion, was it preventable?

Harri Hursti: It’s something that can be easily avoided in the future. Otherwise, send the paper in a flat envelope, making sure people now know that folding is more dangerous than it is. Again, the underlying fact here is that at no point did this affect the outcome of the election. Even with the original machine tally and hand tally, which revealed the spread we were investigating, none of this changed the outcome of the election.

Peter Biello: A key objective of this process was to identify ways to prevent this from happening again. What were the most important things New Hampshire could do to shore up their election against similar issues?

Harri Hursti: First of all, we have a list of recommendations at the end of the report. One thing that is for the public’s confidence and to make sure that the elections always go well, to have a mandatory risk limitation audit for every race, every time, so no one has to ask for that. The New Hampshire Secretary of State piloted it last year, so this process has already started. My belief is that they will continue to do so. After all, even with this folding issue, what we have found is that New Hampshire has excellent control over the paper ballots and excellent control over the process. So nobody would say that 2020 has been an easy year for anyone because of COVID and everything, so under the circumstances it was still a good, well-organized election, even when there was that gap and that the gap was made up, which means the system was working.

Peter Biello: How urgently do you think New Hampshire should adopt the auditing system that you described?

Harri Hursti: I mean, the risk mitigation audit is something where the first states that implemented it, it took them six to eight years to get it right. Thus, at present, New Hampshire has the advantage of already having access to best practices. I mean, my recommendation would be to implement this for 2022.

Peter Biello: Is there anything else about this audit that you think people really should keep in mind in the future?

Harri Hursti: Well I think the key point here is that the reason New Hampshire elections are extremely well organized and trustworthy and [enabled] this check is [because] New Hampshire is based on paper ballots and you have excellent control over forensic material. Without a paper ballot, without the control, you would never have been able to do a full forensic audit and find the root causes. But this is only possible because the basis is solid.

Peter Biello: Secretary of State Bill Gardner often likes to say about the New Hampshire election, “You can’t hack a pencil. He really likes the paper system that we have. Looks like what you’re saying validates his statement.

Harri Hursti: Right. It’s quite interesting that computer security expert, election security experts, hackers like me almost look like Luddits to us because we understand how vulnerable technology is and how important it is to have hand-marked paper ballots so that the voter’s intention is recorded in permanent media and you have the option to go back and check the results because every voting machine we have today hui and every voting machine we have for the foreseeable future can still be hacked. The use of voting machines is essential in the United States and in larger New Hampshire jurisdictions, however, always check.

Peter Biello: Harri Hursti is an ethical hacker and an expert in electoral security. Thanks again for speaking with me. I really appreciate this.

Harri Hursti: Thank you for having me.

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