Campaign finance report draws complaint in local House race

Oct. 8—Republican candidate Joseph Mirzoeff of Keene has complained to the N.H. Secretary of State’s Office about discrepancies in the campaign finance report of one of his opponents, Democratic Rep. Amanda Elizabeth Toll, in the race to represent Cheshire House District 15.

Mirzoeff’s complaint involves two errors Toll made in referring to a contributor on her campaign finance report, which appears on a state website.

Karla Jurvetson, of Los Gatos, Calif., contributed $10,000 to Toll on Aug. 19, but her name was misspelled on the report as Karl and an “NH” instead of a “CA” was placed in her otherwise correct address.

Mirzoeff said these two errors make the contribution look like it was from an in-state donor, which he said could work to Toll’s benefit and could violate election codes.

“It has a beneficial purpose,” Mirzoeff said Wednesday. “It’s wrong. None of this makes sense unless it’s really intentional.”

Toll, of Keene, said the errors were an accident.

“It was absolutely not deliberate, it was a typo and an input mistake,” she said in an email. “Although I mistakenly entered “NH” I did correctly enter the CA zip code, so I’m clearly not trying to deceive by entering a zip code that doesn’t exist in the state. I have filed an amended update now that I am aware of the mistake.”

Secretary of State David Scanlan said it’s not unusual for there to be clerical mistakes when candidates file their campaign finance reports. Candidates often rectify such errors by filing an…