The most recent instance of a vote hand-count demonstrating that the machine count was incorrect happened in Iowa, where Republican Luana Stoltenberg defeated Democrat Craig Cooper in a state House contest.
WQDA-TV reported that Stoltenberg won her election by 29 votes on election night.
Given the razor-thin margin of victory, authorities attempted to undertake a machine recount on November 15, but were unable to do so when the tabulator machine repeatedly malfunctioned.
Cooper took the lead by six votes following a human recount on November 17 and a machine recount on November 18, which put him in the lead.
This week’s final hand-count returned Stoltenberg to the lead by 11 votes.
The Iowa House District 81 race has taken another twist, after the latest ballot recount determined that Republican Luana Stoltenberg is the winner. https://t.co/f5xAS7ufcA
— WQAD (@wqad) December 8, 2022
There have been other tight contests around the nation in which early tabulation problems led to the incorrect candidate being declared the victor.
Karma Metzler Fitzgerald, a Democrat in Idaho, believed she had defeated Republican Jack Nelsen for a state House seat by 383 votes. However, once a tabulation error was rectified, it was discovered that Nelsen had really won by 84 votes.
In a state house contest in New Hampshire last month, a recount gave Democrat Maxine Mosley a one-vote victory against Republican Larry Gagne, as opposed to a 23-vote defeat.
One of the more stunning outcomes of the midterm elections of 2022 occurred during the Georgia primaries last April.
According to the first machine-tabulated results issued on May 24, Democratic candidate for Dekalb County Commission Michelle Long Spears placed third and did not advance to the runoff.
“Spears and her team, though, noticed that initial results showed her receiving zero election votes at most precincts in the district,” The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
Spears moved from third to first place after a hand-count was completed during the Memorial Day holiday weekend. She gained over 3,600 votes. She won her June runoff and ran unchallenged in the November election.
More on this story via The Western Journal:
The Georgia secretary of state’s office admitted to making several programming mistakes in its Dominion Voting Systems machines.
In 2020, a hand-count conducted in the entire state of Georgia following the general election also revealed that thousands of ballots had not been counted. Those discrepancies were also attributed to human error in the uploading of ballots to the machines. CONTINUE READING…