Seeking to quell the growing political clamor resulting from its refusal to look into the Windham Incident, the Attorney General’s office has now publicly claimed that it is “investigating” the matter. This is a misleading half-truth.
We want to thank State Senator Bob Giuda for this Op-Ed. If you have an Op-Ed or LTE
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From my experience as a former FBI Agent, they are NOT doing an investigation; they are doing what is known as a document review. They have no intention of doing what’s actually necessary to get to the heart of the issue: rerun the ballots through the machines and perform a hand count to determine the actual number of ballots that were cast.
Interestingly, Great Britain, Australia, and Canada count all election ballots by hand. They don’t even use machines, in order to avoid the problems manifesting themselves in our election process.
To be clear, five State Senators, the Senate legal counsel, and the Assistant Secretary of State were all on the February 5th Zoom call in which assistant AG Edwards and Election Law Chief Chong Yen stated categorically that they are not going to investigate the machines or the total ballot count – the only two actions that can provide the answer to what exactly happened. Their document review will do nothing to determine whether there was a machine error or a recount error.
So instead of doing the right thing, as requested by the entire spectrum of those involved in the incident, the AG’s office is performing “damage control” to camouflage its refusal to investigate the machines and the ballots that produced the largest unexplained recount error in NH history.
It bears mentioning that Windham officials have done everything possible to get the AG to investigate this matter. They bear no responsibility for the AG’s failure.
Every party to this issue has asked the AG to check the machines and the ballots. And, having been called to task for its continuing refusal to do so, the office is now attempting to deceive the public into thinking their document review is sufficient.
It is deeply troubling when an agency willfully refuses to act in a matter as critical as the integrity of our elections. It is even more disturbing when the agency attempts to deceive the public. What could have been considered an excusable error in judgment is now beginning to look like malfeasance.
