Witness urges committee to restore ballots, cites checklist errors and tabulator questions

Mister Busa, a witness at the House Government Operations & Military Affairs committee hearing, told lawmakers that a post-election review found dozens of voters in Bennington assigned to the wrong checklist and urged the committee to "get these 55 people their ballots and let them vote" so their votes can be counted.

The witness said the committee's review of entry checklists and town files showed a set of 55 names that he believes should appear on the Bennington 1 checklist but were on Bennington 5 or otherwise misrecorded. He described color-coded checklist marks that he said indicate mailed ballots and in-person entries and asked clerks to confirm why two entries on a Bennington 5 entry list had a handwritten "c" next to their names.

The issues matter, he told the committee, because the panel previously saw a discrepancy between the number of check-ins and the number of ballots counted: "Remember when we were looking before and there was, 1,333 checked in, but there was 1,334 ballots counted?" he said. He said his review of town-provided materials showed…