Just days before Christmas, we followed up on the 197 missing votes in Windham originally reported back in November. Observers from the Secretary of State’s Office had released a report on their experience but made no mention of the difference between the number of ballots and the number of votes.
Tom Murray and Ken Eyring discussed this with me and other Windham-related election issues in the most recent episode of GrokTALK! During that interview, I said I’d contact the Secretary of State’s Office and ask if anyone was looking into it. I got a response from Dave Scanlan.
Yes, this is under review. The hard numbers of voters checking in (10,318) and actual ballots cast (10,338) is off by 20. The sum of all votes is the aggregate total of all the votes for candidates, write-ins, undervotes and overvotes for a given office. That number (10,141) is off by 197 when compared to the number of voters as reported checking in. We are working to understand the math they used for these reconciliation calculations. An additional report from this office will be forthcoming.
I forwarded the response to Ken and Tom, who are wondering what Secretary Scanlan means by “working to understand the math they used for these reconciliation calculations.” Only ONE type of math can be used to add the numbers together.
In other words, despite the lack of notation in the 18-page report by that office on how the Town of Windham conducted the November 5th Election, they are looking into it.
We’ll assume the look wasn’t initiated by our ask, but that might be the case.
Regardless, from 30,000 feet, Windham’s elections are still a clusterf**k out from under which residents can’t possibly expect honest or at least complete results. It is a truth they’ve only learned thanks to Tom and Ken and GraniteGrok.
The lesson you should take away from this is that no one is going to watchdog your election officials at any level, like concerned citizens asking questions, pointing out departures from procedure or the law, who refuse to give up or back down. If your town lacks them, it’s a good bet you can’t trust the integrity and completeness of your local elections either.
The results of which accumulated determine state and federal representation.
What if every town is off? What’s that “math” worth to you?
We’re here for you if you need some help.
