Thursday, September 14, 2017

RIP, NH Primary



It’s been quite a week in New Hampshire. An armed man went into the ICU at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center and shot and killed his mother. There was an attempted armed robbery at a bank in downtown Concord. The investigation into the attempted lynching of an 8-year-old biracial boy in Claremont continues. The Pence Kobach Fraud Commission met in NH to continue in their attempt to legitimize their bogus claims of widespread voter fraud.  

The meeting of the commission was held at St. Anselm’s College, a private, religious school. Former US Senator Judd Gregg helped St. Anselm’s obtain $15 million in federal funding to renovate the building that became the school’s Institute of Politics. The executive director of the Institute of Politics is Neal Levesque, who worked for former Congressman Charles Bass for 12 years. A In other words: a public, allegedly non-partisan commission met at a private, religious, rather partisan school.

Two months ago, I wrote that Kobach was under investigation for violating the Hatch Act, using his role in the commission as part of his 2018 campaign for governor of Kansas. That investigation continues. Since then, we’ve also learned that not only is Kobach the Secretary of State for Kansas, he’s also moonlighting as a paid columnist for Breitbart News. Breitbart being a far right “news” outfit run by Steve Bannon, the recently expelled advisor to President Trump. Breitbart’s ties to white supremacists resulted in them losing 90% of their advertisers between April and June of 2017.

This is the publication that pays Kris Kobach to write a column. A Kobach column in Breitbart was part of the misinformation packet handed out at the meeting of the Fraud Commission. Testifying before the Voter Fraud Commission in NH were 12 white men. There were no women. No people of color. No town clerks or supervisors of the checklist participated in this fact-free extravaganza.

As soon as Donald Trump was elected president, he began to whine about voter fraud. He won the election through the Electoral College. That he failed to win the popular vote has been a terrible blow to his overweening, childlike ego. Trump is the bestest, smartest, most wonderful person ever, and that every person in the United States didn’t vote for him can only mean one thing – fraud.

NH Governor Chris Sununu paved the way for this by bleating about “busloads of voters from Massachusetts” on the Howie Carr radio show, days before the election. Chris Sununu did not attend the fraud side show – how could he? His father, the disgraced philatelist, was ensconced on the dais. No one asked him how all that fraud impacted his son’s election. No one asked him why his family wants to sabotage NH elections.

Sununu-the-younger has had to walk back his claims of voter fraud, given that he was elected. The Republicans would have us believe that the fraud was confined to only two races – the presidential race and the US Senate race. We’re being asked to believe that people came to NH to fraudulently vote for only two candidates. In that same election, Republican Chris Sununu was elected, and the Republican Party now controls the entire state government. We’re also being asked to believe that THOSE votes weren’t fraud.

You can’t have it both ways.

One of the ideas suggested by a witness testifying before the Fraud Commission, was doing background checks on voters. The kind of background checks that are so bitterly opposed by NH gundamentalists. These are the kinds of contortions that the far right will engage in to try to ensure they stay in power. Another suggestion is raising the voting age; to ensure college students don’t vote. It seems the GOP platform has little appeal to young voters, so rather than do the hard work of recruiting, they’d prefer to just eliminate young voters.

NH Secretary of State, Bill Gardner is part of the Sham Commission. In recent years he’s become the tool of those claiming voter fraud, chosen to give them bipartisan credibility. Gardner has been in office since 1976. After a long career in public service, he has besmirched his legacy of defending the first in the nation primary by legitimizing this charade.

What should offend every one of us is the damage being done to our elections by this commission. This craven nonsense is an insult to every town clerk, every moderator, the supervisors of the checklist, the ballot clerks, and every volunteer that is part of our election process – a process that has been working just fine for hundreds of years. That the majority party has chosen to perpetuate this circus tells us that they’ve abandoned any integrity they may have once had.

I’ve long said that when NH loses the first in the nation primary, it will be because of the GOP. Say goodbye, NH. It’s all over now but the shouting.




This was published as an op-ed in the September 15, 2017 edition of the Conway Daily Sun  newspaper


5 comments:

Unknown said...

thank you. I posted a Facebook comment on a thread started by Al Baldasaro. Yes, He is my Facebook friend. When everyone on the thread was shouting about the fraud and that Senator Hassan should step down, I said "but Republicans control the State House, The State Senate, and Chris Sununu is our governor." No comment. not one. silence.

If there was cheating, then the cheaters were lazy. Now we are stuck with a fetal homicide bill.

Junior Mints said...

What is Trigger-Happy Maxie A up to lately? Last time I bothered to pay attention to this meatball, he was blathering on about thousands of Massachusetts residents flooding New Hampshire on voting day.

Unknown said...

WHY is there such a problem making sure only legal NH residents vote here? I really do not understand WHY you have an issue with this. except for my years of military service, I am a lifelong NH resident. I do NOT want some child, that is here for four years at the most, deciding how I live my life. I do NOT want anyone fromanother state voting on our issius. WHY is this so hard to understand? IF there is no issue, there is no issue. WHY so much resistance to fining out?

susanthe said...

Why is there such a problem with bullshit? Why are you pretending that we don't have a photo ID law? Why are you pretending we don't have all kinds of laws, in fact?

Why are you pretending that the "busloads" are legitimate?

Are you suggesting that the voter age should be increased to be higher than 18? At 18 one is a legal ADULT not a child.
Do your adult children vote? Should only lifelong residents and their progeny be allowed to vote? I've been here for 30 years - is that long enough?

If there were voter fraud, it would have been proven by now. It never has been. Why are you buying into this pretense?

If there was voter fraud in the last election, why aren't you calling for a do-over? How do you explain why it is that the Republicans control every branch of our government, if there was fraud? You think these imaginary "children" came here to vote for Chris Sununu?

Unknown said...

Apparently I inadvertently engaged in an act of voter fraud in a tamworth election in 1999. At the time I was a 38 year NH native. I'd lived in Chocorua for several years and had recently made a temporary relocation to Effingham. I was still a registered voter in Tamworth come election time so that's where I went to vote. A descendant of a former President ( ?πŸ€”πŸ˜„) followed me out to my mc and began interrogating me on my residential status. Having recently performed a ceremony for the roommate of my last known address and knowing I was not yet registered elsewhere, his voter enforcement actions seemed a bit of a stretch and unnecessary. Should a Conway natives vote be refused in this instance? Just askin!