Why Do You Keep Lying To Us, Bill Gardner?

                       

This was one of the first tweets I saw this morning when I logged in to Twitter. Once again, our Secretary of State proclaiming that "NH is the easiest state in the country to vote in." 

https://www.fosters.com/news/20201009/secretary-of-state-bill-gardner-confident-nh-is-ready-for-nov-3-election-rsquounlike-any-otherrsquo

He says it all the time. 

Bill Gardner is the NH Secretary of State. He has access to all kinds of information about voting in NH and the rest of the country. He has access to far more information than a humble blogger like me has. 

Yet, despite my lack of access, I know, by doing a simple Google search, that NH is NOT the easiest state to vote in. It's not even in the top 10 of the easiest states to vote in. 

This map is from a comprehensive voter guide put together by Molly Olmstead and Mark Joseph Stern for Slate. As you can see, NH is considered "moderately difficult," not "easiest state to vote in." 

A 2018 study done by Northern Illinois University found that the 10 easiest states to vote in were:

1. Oregon 
2. Colorado 
3. California 
4. North Dakota 
5. Iowa 
6. Maine
7. Utah 
8. Massachusetts 
9. Maryland 
10. New Jersey
    
    Read more here: https://www.miamiherald.com/article220534340.html#storylink=cpy

I don't see New Hampshire in there either. I do, however, see Oregon at the top of the list. 

If I know this, so does Bill Gardner. That's why I'm asking why he's lying. And I'm asking the incurious NH media, who all operate on a GOP default setting, why they don't ever ask him about this. Why isn't anyone else asking him why he's lying to us? 

Links to a few stories where Gardner proclaims NH is the easiest state to vote in. 

http://indepthnh.org/2020/09/09/gardner-looks-to-november-and-future-elections/

https://www.courthousenews.com/nh-secretary-of-state-gardner-re-elected-to-22nd-term/

https://www.wmur.com/article/nh-primary-source-gardner-praises-end-to-eight-year-ordeal-over-nh-voting-requirements/32678478

Election Integrity

NH has a late state primary. This year it fell on September 11. The general election is November 6. This doesn’t leave a lot of time for the Secretary of State’s office to print up ballots for the 221 towns, 13 cities, or the absentee ballots – especially those that have to be sent overseas. The overseas ballots are sent out 45 days before Election Day. 

This year it didn’t go well. There were errors on the ballots. Some of the overseas voters received incorrect ballots. Stephen D’Angelo, a Democrat running for State Rep. in Rockingham District 4 was completely left off the ballot. In his place was the name of the guy he’d beaten by 5 votes in the primary. Tammy Siekman, a Democrat from Londonderry, running for State Senate was listed as a Libertarian. Gray Chynoweth, a Democrat running for the Executive Council was listed in the column for Democrats, but as a Libertarian. The mistakes have been corrected, but the incorrect ballots were sent overseas.

Deputy Secretary of State, Dave Scanlan, was quite offhand about it. He was quoted in the Concord Monitor as saying that it only affected about 50 votes, but those people would all get a corrected ballot. He said that it was a small percentage of voters who received incorrect ballots, but the key thing was that the ballots for Election Day, when most people vote, were corrected.

That sounds rather blithe to me. If I were one of the 50 voters who got a bogus ballot, I would be angry. I would feel as though my vote didn’t count, and that my state didn’t care about my vote. Secretary of State Bill Gardner was quoted in the Boston Globe as saying, “We do a lot of proofing here, but things happen.” Things happen? We should just accept these errors as part of the process? That’s ironic, coming from a guy who claims to be concerned about election integrity.

Bill Gardner has been the Secretary of State in NH since 1976. He is elected every biennium – not by the voters, but by the NH legislature. For decades he enjoyed the support of legislators from both parties. But that was before he bought into the Republican fairy tales about our elections. That was before candidate Chris Sununu went on the Howie Carr radio show and talked about busloads of people from Massachusetts coming to vote in NH. It was before he got involved with Kris Kobach’s voter integrity commission. It was before he surrendered to becoming a pawn of the far right and their voter fraud/voter suppression agenda.

The bus rumors began when Democrats began winning elections. NH Republicans felt entitled to those seats, and they were plenty miffed when they started losing. Then came Chris Sununu who really put the rumors up in lights – and by doing so, enabled Donald Trump to question the integrity of NH elections. Somewhere along the way Republicans decided it was easier to blame their failure to recruit young people to their party on student voting, and they’ve been desperate to eliminate it ever since.

And so they set about undermining our elections. Every year there are nearly a dozen bills filed that attempt to redefine the words “residency,” “resident,” and of course, everyone’s favorite, “domicile.” SB 3, currently in a bizarre legal limbo, comes with a provision that if your residency is in question, people may come to your house and question you. Yep, that’s voting in the free world, folks. In a state that has no problem with voter fraud. Brought to you by the political party that ran an out-of-stater as their goobernatorial candidate in 2014.

A study done by the Secretary of State’s office and the AG found that voter fraud is quite rare in New Hampshire. Yet, State Senator Regina Birdsell (a zealous perpetuator of the false fraud narrative) often refers to the “perception” her constituents have about voter fraud. It’s a perception that she and her cohorts in the Republican Party have worked hard to create. Our hapless Secretary of State has fallen right into their trap.

When asked about the busloads, Gardner said at a hearing at the State House, that his office has never been provided proof, but a lot of people in this state believe that is happening. Under no other circumstances do we write laws based on perception or the beliefs of “a lot of people.” It is truly unfortunate that Bill Gardner didn’t choose to retire before he tarnished his own legacy. 

Finally, there are those who continue to spout the fiction of college students influencing our elections. A helpful reminder: the Republican Party won control of every branch of our state government in the last election. It seems all those college students and busloads of Democrats voted Republican. 

Published as an op-ed in the November 2, 2018 edition of the Conway Daily Sun newspaper. 

Hankies and Hysteria

Our legislators are a resourceful bunch. Before every voting session, there are caucuses, one for the Republicans and one for the Democrats. Upcoming votes are discussed. Then, as they approach Representatives Hall, lobbyists are standing in the hall, handing out information sheets. The NH Liberty Alliance hands out a mustard yellow sheet called “The Gold Standard” that tells libertea leaning representatives how to vote on key liberty issues. There is an explanation of why a bill is either pro or anti liberty, but for those who don’t want to do that much reading, there is a handy key up in the right (!) hand corner of the page, that lists the bill number and whether to vote yes or no. It’s easier than thinking.

This year the majority party, unsatisfied with every tactic you’ve read so far, has added a new technique for telling their members how to vote.  Republican floor leaders now have red and green hankies. When they want their members to vote yes, they wave the green hankies. They wave red hankies for no. For those who lose their short-term memory in between the caucus and the House floor, this must be an invaluable reminder, and not at all undignified. Oh, wait – I take that back. Representative Al Baldasaro was seen kissing, licking, and fondling his hankie during one vote. At least we taxpayers are only paying them $100 a year for their antics.

*Note: Red and green are the colors of the buttons on each legislator’s voting station.

This is a new development, because prior Speakers wouldn’t have tolerated it. The hankie wavers, however, are part of the majority leadership. There are seven Assistant Majority Leaders: Al Baldasaro, Dave Danielson, Larry Gagne, Michael McCarthy, Laurie Sanborn, Victoria Sullivan, and Michael Vose. There are also eight whips. There’s the Majority Whip, Kathleen Hoelzel, and the Deputy Majority Whip, Bill Ohm. There are six Assistant Majority Whips: David Bates, Gregory Hill, Debra DeSimone, Carolyn Matthews, Claire Rouillard, and Terry Wolf. That’s a possible 15 semaphorists signaling during a vote. Apparently they aren’t worried about distracting their colleagues with all that flapping.

For such a large leadership team, it’s remarkably concentrated. Nine of the members are from Hillsborough County, 7 from Rockingham, and one from Merrimack County. There are 10 counties in the state, yet only three were able to provide representatives who possess the requisite leadership skills? One also wonders precisely what leadership qualities Representative Baldasaro displays, other than a history of obnoxious comments and slobbering on a hankie.

Speaker Chandler seems to be having trouble keeping his House in order. In addition to the hankie waving is the schedule. Weeks go by without a voting session, than at the last minute hundreds of bills are crammed into a two-day marathon. This ensures that the bills won’t get proper attention. It also ensures that representatives with jobs will probably miss one of the marathon days, meaning fewer votes on key issues. Is this intentional, or just poor management?

Meanwhile, the NH GOP has become increasingly shrill, bordering on the hysterical. HB 628, the bill to create a family and medical leave insurance program, something that would benefit every non-wealthy worker, is being billed as a way to create AN INCOME TAX. Bill Gardner, who has been Secretary of State since the Second Punic War is going to be challenged in 2019. This is being touted as: The DEMOCRATS WANT TO TAKE AWAY THE FIRST IN THE NATION PRIMARY. And of course, any discussion about ending the wholesale slaughter of our public school students is A GUN GRAB.

Bill Gardner was a good Secretary of State for a long time. If he’d retired 4 years ago, we’d all be burnishing his halo. Instead, he bought into the nonsense the majority party has been churning about voter fraud since Democrats started winning elections in 2006. He allied himself with the Republicans in their quest to prevent student voting, and he’d recently chosen to prevent seniors from voting, by dictating that towns  have no right to reschedule their town meetings during storms. During the most recent storm, the State House closed early but old people were supposed to leap into their cars to go vote in a blizzard. Then, he allied himself with Kris Kobach, which was a bad move on every level. Kobach’s recent Kansas voter fraud trial revealed how bogus his whole enterprise is. Gardner should have avoided the fraudulent fraud commission, the wet firecracker waste of tax dollars. In 35 states, the Secretary of State is elected by the voters. In NH, the SoS is elected by the legislature. It may be time to reconsider that.

The Trump presidency reveals a moral and ethical vacuum within the Republican Party. No wonder they sound so shrill. They can feel their grip on power and relevance slipping away. Those hankies may be put to good use in November.

This was published as an op-ed in the March 30, 2018 edition of the Conway Daily Sun newspaper

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

The Fraudulent Fraud Commission

On October 31, 2016, right wing talk radio show host Howie Carr asked his guest, NH gubernatorial candidate Chris Sununu why Democrats have repeatedly won gubernatorial elections. Sununu responded by saying that NH Democrats have repeatedly engaged in voter fraud.   

“We have same day voter registration, and to be honest, when Massachusetts elections are not very close, they’re busing them in all over the place,” Sununu said.

He also said the system was rigged. A week later, Sununu was elected governor of NH, and had to pedal backwards furiously. After all, if all those buses from MA came to NH and voted – it meant they voted for him, and he didn’t want anyone to question HIS win.  Days after the election, Brave Sir Robin announced that he no longer believed the system was rigged.

On right wing talk radio, Sununu was asked how come Democrats have repeatedly won gubernatorial elections. His response was to lie and blame voter fraud. Too bad he wasn’t honest enough to point out that one-term Governor Craig Benson’s corrupt shenanigans poisoned his party for several cycles. The NH GOP couldn’t manage to find strong candidates. In 2014, they tried to pass off a guy from out of state as a viable NH candidate. Then of course, there was the phone jamming scandal of 2002, which poisoned the brand – but given that is how his brother was elected to the US Senate, one wouldn’t expect him to mention that. Easier to blame mythical fraud.

Meanwhile, Trump announced in January that he was going to investigate voter fraud. Winning the election wasn’t enough for him. That anyone else got any votes had to have been a result of “widespread voter fraud. In February, Trump announced that the reason he lost NH was because of widespread voter fraud and thousands of people were bused in from Massachusetts. Did the bus hide behind a tree in Jackson? Where did they park that bus in Hart’s Location? 

Trump was (and still is) miffed that everyone in the US didn’t vote for him. He’s an insecure little tyrant, and he desperately needed the validation of a NH win. Trump’s acolyte, Governor Sununu was again forced to say that there was no widespread voter fraud because, again, he didn’t want his win to be questioned. Since then, Trump the sore winner, has continued to complain about the election on Twitter, as world leaders do.

In May, Trump issued an executive order establishing a commission on election integrity. Vice President Mike Pence is chairing the commission. He spouts the same false claims Trump has made about voter fraud. As Governor of Indiana, he supported a crackdown on a statewide effort to register African American voters. The commission’s vice chair is Kris Kobach, the Kansas Secretary of State. Despite all evidence to the contrary, Kobach continues to insist that voter fraud is widespread. A number of his voter ID provisions have been struck down in federal court. He’s been fined for misleading a federal judge in a voting rights case, and is currently the subject of a Hatch Act complaint that alleges he’s exploiting his position on the commission to promote his candidacy – he’s running for governor of Kansas.

This is how we know the commission on voter fraud is fraudulent. Frauds are in charge of it. Regrettably, NH’s own Secretary of State, Bill Gardner has allowed himself to be used by the fraudsters. He’s on the commission, too. Gardner has been serving as Secretary of State since 1976. He’s been making inconsistent noise about voter fraud for a few years and now claims he wants to clear up any doubts about election integrity. That the same people who are using him created the doubts about election integrity appears to have escaped his notice.  

The commission intends to create a national voter database, and has begun by requesting a lot of information from every state about voters, including: names, addresses, birthdates, party affiliation, electoral participation history, felon status, and the last 4 digits of their Social Security numbers. So far, 44 states have refused to comply with some, if not all, of the demand to produce this information. Bill Gardner is willing to provide it all. Only a court challenge is preventing it from happening.  After a lifetime of public service, this will be Gardner’s legacy.

In 2005, NH Republicans were outraged by the REAL ID Act, claiming that this would create a national identification database. In 2017, they are rolling over for Donald Trump, and insisting that those who are opposed to the creation of a national voter database “have something to hide.”

To show us all how well the fraudulent fraud commission will do with handling sensitive information, they’ve just released 112 pages of unreacted emails from people commenting on the commission. Their names and email addresses have all been made public.

 This was published as an op-ed in the July 21, 2017  edition of the Conway Daily Sun Newspaper