The Cambridge Board of Election commissioners met Jan. 14 to answer questions from the public about a report laying out the mishaps on Election Night last year. They voted to put the report on file, but did not agree on how to proceed.
The 10-page report from the city’s election department describes how technical errors and inadequate review processes led the election commission to tabulate the wrong votes on election night and to misreport Eugenia Schraa Huh was elected as the sixth place finisher for School Committee. In reality, it was David Weinstein, who was initially reported as not being elected to the committee.
The report says that “technical errors were inadvertently made” by a contractor from LHS Associates, the state’s exclusive reseller of the Dominion Voting Systems machines used for elections. Specifically, data from an October ballot test “inadvertently remained” on an external hard drive.
“In the process of copying files, the LHS technician copied file folders with the same names on top of each other, causing some batches to be overwritten. When the data from this folder was imported into [the election management system], the technician imported most of the batches from Test Deck as well,” the report said.
On Election Day, that drive was then used to also transfer actual vote data from the high-speed scanner used for processing mail-in ballots to the Dominion election management software used to aggregate votes and calculate the election results.
Some of the test deck ballots were added to actual precinct totals, while some replaced actual votes, so in some precincts there were more ballots than there should have been and in others fewer.
How it all unfolded
Shortly after midnight on November 5, after reviewing the results for about half an hour, the Cambridge election auditor first observed discrepancies between the total number of ballots reported as counted and the total number of ballots reported on the physical tapes with the results printed out. After the commission’s executive director and assistant director discussed the matter, the preliminary unofficial results were given to the Election Commissioners, according to the report. The Commissioners, who were not informed of staff concerns, voted to release the results.
The auditor subsequently correctly speculated that test desk ballots had been improperly included. His concern, the report notes, “was met with some skepticism” and “the LHS technician who operated [the program] insisted that the test deck data had been purged” from the high-speed scanner and the software before Election Day.
Staff left to go sleep.
LHS President Jeff Silvestro examined the system later on Wednesday morning, Nov. 6, and confirmed that test deck data had indeed been included in the unofficial preliminary results. But commissioners were still not told.
“Apprising the Election Commissioners of these discrepancies on Wednesday would have required that information be issued to them as part of the public meeting. It would certainly have required releasing a second set of preliminary unofficial results to the public, risking … confusion,” the report said.
Some observers disagreed with the delay.
“The election commissioners should be the very first people told,” said Robert Winters, author of the Cambridge Civic Journal website and candidate for city council in the 2025 election. “They f***** ** royally,” he said.
George Varghese, chair of the Cambridge Democratic City Committee, was more measured: “I’m glad the error was caught and rectified, and the votes of the people of Cambridge were honored.”
But the committee’s vice chair, Deb Nicholson, said “You can’t ask people to solemnify the results without all the information. If the results are ‘sus,’ they shouldn’t be shared!” she said.
John Olds, chair of the Cambridge Republican City Committee, declined to comment.
(The election commissioners are nominated by the Democratic and Republican city committees, and the Cambridge City Manager appoints commissioners from those nominees.)
Larry Ward, chairman of the election commission and a Democrat, said he had been told in advance of Friday’s public meeting. “I think everybody knew,” he said.
But Tom Stohlman, the other Democratic commissioner, said he did not know before Friday’s meeting. The other commissioners did not comment.
Concerns raised
The Jan. 14 meeting was meant to be an opportunity for election department staff to “answer the public, should they send in any comments,” according to Tanya Ford, the department’s executive director. But there was no discussion of concerns raised by the public.
Stohlman read from a prepared statement and presented his concerns.
“The fact that results — even if they were unofficial preliminary results — could be altered by the introduction of data from hundreds of mock test ballots into the accounting process, it really shook me. It shook me to the core,” Stohlman said. He said there “a lot of things [the commissioners] have to do” in 2026.
“I mean, we could just [not] release the results,” said Ward, referring to the election night release of preliminary results. “It would have eliminated the issue, the problem.”
Stohlman disagreed. “The problem still would have been there.”
Other commissioners seemed less worried.
“I’ve been on this board for many years, and this is the first time this has happened,” said Ethridge King, one of the Republican commissioners. “So, it’s not a recurring problem, and we don’t want to go overboard with changes because something happened once.”
Charlie Marquardt, the other Republication commissioner, initially said he was inclined to develop new procedures, but later seemed to agree with King: “Not only did it happen just that once, it was caught, albeit after the release of the preliminary unofficial results, by procedures already in place designed to detect and prevent issues like that,” he said.
The Secretary of State’s investigation is ongoing, a spokeswoman said.
The Jan. 28 agenda for the Cambridge Election Commission carries eleven “suggested topics for discussion” from Stohlman, including “Adopt process to ensure the technical errors present in the 2025 Municipal Election are not repeated.”
A stronger
Please consider making a financial contribution to maintain, expand and improve Cambridge Day.
We are now a 501(c)3 nonprofit and all donations are tax deductible.
Please consider a recurring contribution.
