Fact check: Typo in New Hampshire vote tally was corrected, not counted

The claim: Maggie Hassan won 1,100 votes from town with fewer than  700 people

Computer glitches and human errors in the midterm elections have fueled inaccurate claims of voter fraud, the latest of which centers on a small county in New Hampshire.

"Another Democrat Miracle! Maggie Hassan Wins 1,100 Votes from Town with Population Under 700," reads the headline of a Nov. 13 article by Gateway Pundit, a conservative website with a long history of sharing falsehoods.

In two weeks, the article was shared nearly 3,000 times, according to CrowdTangle, a social media analytics tool.

Screenshots of the headline also appeared on Instagram, where seven versions of the post garnered 500 likes. The claim also appeared on Twitter and Facebook, where it was posted by MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, who has been a frequent purveyor of baseless voter fraud claims.

But the claim is wrong.

The New Hampshire Secretary of State’s office sent USA TODAY a press release explaining that the 1,106 votes the state reported Hassan winning in the town of Columbia was a simple typo. The correct vote tally, 106, is now reflected in official counts.

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USA TODAY reached out to Gateway Pundit and the social media users who shared the claim – including MyPillow's Lindell – for comment.

Town attributes incorrect vote count to a 'simple typo'

The press release said that following election night, New Hampshire’s elections department reported Hassan received 1,106 votes in the town of Columbia, which 2020 Census data shows has a population of about 600.

“The reported number far exceeded the number of ballots actually cast in the town,” the press release said. “The Secretary of State has confirmed with the town clerk of Columbia that Senator Hassan only received 106 votes on election night. The original figure entered was a simple typo.”

The error came from information submitted on the official return of votes form, the press release said. The return of votes form is a document town and ward moderators use to record vote tallies, which are sent to the secretary of state on election night, according to the state’s Election Procedures Manual.

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New Hampshire election administrators use a variety of measures to ensure errors are caught and corrected, the manual explains. These include comparing the number of ballots used from the inventory to the number of votes cast and comparing the total number of votes for all candidates to the number of votes cast.

The manual notes that errors can occur at points in the process where election officials are manually reporting figures, including “when votes from different counting tables are added together, when totals of hand-counted ballots are added to totals on the results tape from device counted ballots, or when results from tally sheets are transcribed to the Return of Votes.”

The secretary of state’s website has been updated with the correct number of votes for Hassan in Columbia, and the error did not affect the race results.

“Hassan remains the winner of the U.S. Senate race,” the press release says.

PolitiFact also debunked the claim.

Our rating: False

Based on our research, we rate FALSE the claim that Hassan won 1,100 votes from a town  of fewer than 700 people. That figure came from a typo on an official form, the secretary of state’s office said in a press release. The error was later corrected, and it did not affect the results of the race.

Our fact-check sources:

• Anna Fay, Nov. 16, Email interview with USA TODAY

• Gateway Pundit (archived version), Nov. 13, Another Democrat Miracle! Maggie Hassan Wins 1,100 Votes from Town with Population Under 700

• Census Reporter, accessed Nov. 16, Columbia town, Coos County, NH

• New Hampshire Secretary of State, accessed Nov. 18, Election Procedures Manual

• New Hampshire Secretary of State, accessed Nov. 21, 2022 General Election Results

• PolitiFact, Nov. 14, Maggie Hassan didn’t win 1,106 votes in Columbia, New Hampshire. It was a typo

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Fact check: Typo in New Hampshire vote tally corrected, not counted