Why is NH AG Gordon MacDonald Working With James O'Keefe?

This is James O'Keefe dressed up in his nana's fur coat for his very first "sting," when he was pretending to be a pimp - and fooling no one. 

I don't know why James O'Keefe, the fraudulent fraud "investigator" has a hard on for NH, but he does. He's been trying to prove that there's widespread voter fraud in NH for years now, and has succeeded in stepping on his dick every time. 

In 2012, Jimmy and his Fraudulent Squad tried to prove that folks were rigging elections by voting as dead people. They came pretty close to casting those votes themselves, which meant Jimmy had to stay away from NH for a while, because then AG  Michael Delaney was investigating him. One of the names of the dead they tried to use to  make their case with was a veteran who had died a mere 10 days before. The man's family were not happy with Jimmy and his Fraudulent Squad. 

He has a lot of support here. The wingnut libertea groups in NH love Jimmy, even though he's always revealed to be peddling doctored videos and other tarted up nonsense - they think he's an "investigative journalist." Jimmy always has his grifter hand out, and they are likely donors. NH libertea groups want to prevent as many people as they can from voting, so Jimmy's their hero, flying in, making noise, and in time the noise turns out to be a nothingburger. 

I first read of O'Keefe's latest NH scheme in this September 8 Patch story :

The New Hampshire Attorney General's Office is making structural reforms concerning voter fraud cases after the discovery that investigators appear to have been sitting on voter fraud evidence for more than eight months.

Attorney General Gordon MacDonald made the announcement during an interview with James O'Keefe III of Project Veritas Sept. 4 after the organization questioned staffers from the Election Law Unit in August about the lack of action against a double voting suspect from 2016 — even though investigators had evidence about the case for nearly a year.

It seems our very partisan NH AG is taking orders from the Fraudulent Squad at Project Veritas. (The whole story reads as if it was dictated by James O'Keefe.) They found evidence of a man who voted twice, in what is presented as a sinister and deceptive plot where the man dressed up as a woman to defraud the system. 

Then read this story at Jezebel.com

This ain't no victory. Project Veritas made a big "sting" off a guy who has obvious mental health problems, and  is barely getting by financially, and is likely to lose his job because of them. 

Vincent Marzello is worried he’ll lose his fast-food job. After Veritas showed up at his workplace, the owners asked if they could do a background check; with his arrest and subsequent publicity on television and the front page of the local paper, his boss has implied that if customers start coming in to gawk at the guy who voted twice, Marzello could be out of a job. After his arrest, he said he had 85 cents in his checking account—not even enough to pay the $40 dollars usually required to leave jail.

What a triumph - for the bigoted, transphobic Fraudulent Squad - and the NH AG's office. How proud they must be to have rooted out this criminal element! This is a shameful story of harassing a confused man who needs professional help.  The AG should have told O'Keefe to fuck right off with this. 

Gordon MacDonald is the NH Attorney General. Despite his lack of judicial experience, Governor Chris Sununu wanted to put MacDonald on the NH Supreme Court as the Chief Justice. In a very contentious fight, the Executive Council voted no. The governor has been clear that if he is re-elected, he'll be re-nominating the anti-choice/pro-voter suppression MacDonald. 

We know that MacDonald is essentially working for Veritas at this point. Who else is Veritas tight with? It turns out that O'Keefe is buddies with the Proud Boys - the violent, right wing racist group that the president so kindly mentioned at the debate. 

This piece in The New Republic connects all the Veritas dots to the Proud Boys. In 2017, O'Keefe was honored as Proud Boy of the month in their magazine. He's buddies with Proud boy founder Gavin McInnes and white supremacist Stefan Molyneaux, who has been a featured speaker at some Free State Project events here in NH. 

These are some Proud Boys. I might have gone with a name that didn't suggest a toddler meeting his toilet training goals - but what do I know? 

James O'Keefe, friend of white supremacists,  is who our NH AG is taking marching orders from, at a time when hate groups are establishing themselves in NH, including the Proud Boys. 

It's more imperative than ever that Chris Sununu is voted out. Gordon MacDonald should not be on the NH Supreme Court -  he shouldn't be the NH AG. 

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. 

Rogue Legislature

        

Last year, NH elected a Republican governor and voted for Republican majorities in all branches of our state government. It’s still something of a puzzle how this came to pass given the rampant voter fraud Donald Trump and his acolytes (including our governor) have brayed about, but the only plausible explanation is that those busloads of people from Massachusetts came to NH to vote for the GOP.

Where a new governor begins sets the tone for his or her administration. Governor Sununu’s first legislative priority was to pass a bill repealing the 100-year-old law requiring a gun owner to have a permit to carry a concealed handgun. NH has the 11^th worst infrastructure in the United States. We ranked 2^nd in the nation for overdose deaths. We have a serious housing problem, and homelessness and poverty are on the rise, yet this gun bill was the most important thing our new governor could think of?

Governor Sununu also took the big raise negotiated for him by the state employee’s union, though he hasn’t yet been willing to sit down and negotiate a contract with them. They’ve been without one for the last 180+ days. One of the sticking points? He doesn’t want to give them a raise, even though he took one, before ever sitting down at his desk in the corner office.

The legislature will be back in session next week. With the likelihood of losing at least some of those majorities (if not all) in the next election, the rabid right majority is going to attempt to pass their entire ideological wish list. There are more voter suppression bills coming up, and more bills to cut business taxes. Bills to maintain fealty to the fossil fuel industries, bills to destroy public education. There are 11 bills dealing with decals on license plates. And because our volunteer legislature full of old people has no interest in a future they won’t be part of, there’s a bill to create a memorial to Meldrim Thomson.

Governor Sununu chose Speaker of the House, Shawn Jasper to be his new Commissioner of Agriculture. One does wonder if that was a deliberate political calculation. The GOP has moved so far to the right that Jasper now appears to be moderate, and removing him from the speakership will very likely allow that rabid agenda to move along more smoothly. When Gene Chandler was elected Speaker last month, there were some sighs of relief. Some real reactionaries ran for Speaker, and Chandler, at least, isn’t one of them. That relief was short-lived.

Chandler has restructured the House leadership. It seems he promised during his campaign for the speakership, to include influential lawmakers in his leadership team. Chandler added six assistant majority leaders, who bring all kinds of “influence” to the table. One of them is State Rep. Al Baldasaro, one of the most nationally famous legislators in the state. Al is famous for a number of reasons (all of them embarrassing) but especially for suggesting that Hillary Clinton should be shot for treason. Another is Victoria Sullivan, who pleased the reactionaries in her party last year, when she launched an attack on the tweets of a female legislator, which appeared to be an attempt to distract attention from former Rep. Robert Fisher, a rape apologist her party was desperate to protect and retain. This is a nice reward for Sullivan, midway through her second term.
 
Speaker Chandler has also appointed a policy advisory committee. This is comprised of “influential” lawmakers who, according to the House website, will review upcoming legislation, hearings, review bills on the calendar, amendments, and give input on various issues. Two of these big thinkers are Frank McCarthy and Lino Avellani. Given that Avellani missed most of the first three months of last year’s session, one wonders how he’ll make it to the weekly meetings, and how, halfway through a second term he became “influential.” Frank McCarthy, after he was ousted in 2012, and before he was reelected, made a career of writing bellicose letters to the editor, where he made frequent bigoted and ugly accusations. In the last year or so, McCarthy has allied himself with the Carroll County contingent of Free Staters and Tea Partiers, groups that promises of inclusion must have been made to by the Speaker candidate, in order to secure their votes.

There are no moderate Republicans any more. The GOP of Trump has no interest in what is right for our state – their interest is in serving party ideology, serving themselves, and their donors/paymasters.

This rogue legislature has the potential to do a great deal of damage. Pay attention – and get involved. State politics may not be sexy, but they affect our lives every day of the week. This is an election year, which gives voters the power to hold their legislators accountable during the session, and again, at the ballot box. 


This was published as an op/ed in the December 29 edition of the Conway Daily Sun newspaper


For those who don't understand the concept of an op-ed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_piece

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 

Business as Usual

The voter fraud drum began cranking up in 2006, when the GOP lost control of the NH House for the first time since the Civil War. Last year the drummers reached new heights. Before the election, Chris Sununu was on the radio in Massachusetts complaining about busloads of Mass voters interfering in our elections. Shortly after the election, Donald Trump started tweeting his displeasure about voter fraud in NH. The next thing you know, there are 40 bills before the NH legislature in 2017 that have to do with voting.

A news story at NH1 this week has the Secretary of State’s office claiming over 400 letters to newly registered voters were either not answered or not deliverable. Anyone who thinks the Secretary of State’s office should be in the investigating business ought to take a look at the SoS website. It’s a nightmare. I suggest they stop trying to play Harriet the Spy, and focus on bringing that office from the 19^th to the 21^st century.

This week, the full Senate will be voting on SB 3, a big, messy, voter suppression bill. A voter will be required to demonstrate their intent to be domiciled here by renting or leasing, buying a house, obtaining a NH driver’s license or non-driver ID, enrolling children in a school, listing the residence on tax forms or other government forms, providing the address to the USPS, obtaining a resident hunting or fishing license, or obtaining utility services at that place for an indefinite period. Those registering on Election Day would be required to provide proof within 10 days following the election. There is a form for a same day registrant to fill out that is approximately as long as Tolstoy’s War and Peace.

Supervisors of the checklist will be required to follow up, and do investigative work; including visiting the address or sending “agents” to verify that the individual was domiciled there on Election Day. The original bill specified those “agents” would be police. The new, amended (but not improved) bill doesn’t define who those “agents” might be. They might be the police. The might be Cub Scouts. They might be members of an interpretive dance troupe. They might be armed vigilantes. Call me crazy, but I don’t believe that casting a ballot should include the threat of storm troopers knocking at the door. Be sure to ask Senator Bradley why he’s sponsoring this nasty bit of business.

The voter suppression folks keep carping about the need to ensure the integrity of our elections. Of course, they’re the same people who have been sowing the seeds of mistrust for over a decade. If only they worked this hard at solving real problems in our state. Speaking of integrity, three bills aimed at creating independent redistricting procedures all failed. The majority party wants to be able to continue to gerrymander every 10 years without interference.

Something we could solve is child lead poisoning. We don’t have 40 bills to address this actual problem. Lead paint has been banned since the 70’s, but still, NH children are exposed to lead paint, and lead in the water from old pipes. If we cared about kids, we’d do something about this – but every time some pesky do-gooder tries, the landlords start to complain about how much it will cost to fix. It seems we value landlords more than we do children. By the time you read this, the fate of SB 247 will be decided – the sole bill aimed at protecting NH children from lead.

The legislature has new ethics rules that have expanded reporting requirements. Lawmakers are expected to file a form saying they have a conflict on any given bill. They can still file legislation to protect their business, or enhance their profits, and they can still vote on it. This form is a sort of magic fig leaf, providing the illusion of ethical cover for the many conflicts of interest our volunteer legislators have on bills they sponsor and vote on. The fig leaf has no teeth – there are no punitive actions taken against those who enrich themselves at taxpayer expense.

The Senate will be voting on SB 244 this week, a bill to increase the amount of money exempted from taxation under the interest and dividends tax for both individuals and businesses. The lead sponsor is Senator Andy Sanborn – a business owner. The Senate passed the bill once, and referred it to the Finance Committee. In the initial vote, multimillionaire State Senator Jeb Bradley recused himself, citing a conflict of interest. Andy Sanborn proudly declared he’d filed his form, and went on to vote for a bill he sponsored, that will increase his wealth.

A summary: This week the NH Senate will continue to perpetuate the illusion of a problem, fail to solve a real problem, and vote for a tax break for the already wealthy.

Business as usual.

This was published as an op-ed in the March 31, 2017 edition of the Conway Daily Sun newspaper 

Stuck in Reverse

The day after being elected governor of New Hampshire, Chris Sununu started talking about voter fraud. He’s deeply concerned about it – though not so deeply as to question the legitimacy of his own election. No, our new governor is content to mutter about the need for “reform.” He’s even called for the elimination of same day voter registration. Apparently no one has explained what that would mean to our newly elected Governor.

In 1993, the National Voter Registration Act was signed into law. It requires states governments to provide the opportunity for any eligible person who applies for a driver’s license or a renewal, or for some form of public assistance to also register to vote.  The state would be required to register applicants by mail, using federal registration forms. Private entities would be able to hold voter registration drives and register voters.

New Hampshire Republicans have always hated this idea. Registering welfare recipients to vote? Registration drives on college campuses? In poor neighborhoods? Oh, hell no! They hated the idea so much that they got out of complying with the motor voter law by having same day voter registration instead. Given a choice between the two, I am certain that they will continue to prefer same-day registration, and that someone will explain all this to Chris Sununu.

Representative David Bates (R-Windham) has adopted the cause of fauxfraud as his new mission, and has filed 13 bills and one constitutional amendment to solve the non-existent problem. Imagine if he and his fellow legislators were even half as interested in solving the very real problem of our state’s crumbling infrastructure?

In speaking about his priorities, our new governor’s top 3 were voting, guns, and union busting. Sununu would like to eliminate the requirement for licensing a concealed handgun. Current law (written by Republicans, by the way) requires one’s local chief of police issue a permit. The chief has the discretion of being able to refuse to give a license to someone he knows to be a bad tempered drunk or domestic abuser. That isn’t enough for the gun crowd, who will not be happy until there are zero gun laws in our state. In fact, some of the gun happy legislators are opposed to domestic abusers losing their guns. Fifty percent of the women murdered in this state are murdered by their abusive partners, but apparently women are easily replaceable in the eyes of the MOAR GUNZ crowd. It is interesting though, that in a state that has so few gun laws, that the governor elect considers this a priority.

Sununu also wants to sign right-to-work (for less) legislation, which we also call union busting. Less than 10% of the NH workforce is unionized, but it’s been the mission of the far right to eliminate that small percentage altogether for decades. They love to opine that it will cause businesses to relocate to NH, because RTW states are doing so well. They’re states in warm climates (no NH energy costs), states with good infrastructure in place, and states that invest in education – AND they don’t have NH property taxes. It’s really all about eliminating the perceived political influence of unions. Well, that and their deep belief that business should be able to pay workers just as badly as they want to.

Our new Gov wants to “fix” the state budget, so he’s brought in Charlie Arlinghaus of the Koch funded Josiah Bartlett Center. Arlinghaus is going to find all the “pork”. It would be laughable if it weren’t so serious. The voter fraud crowd wails about how voter affidavits aren’t investigated quickly, while failing to acknowledge that they underfund the state agency that is in charge of doing the work. Giving the Koch brothers more influence over our state government spending will ensure that not only will we continue to have the 11^th worst infrastructure in the United States; we’ll climb higher on the list.

Sununu also wants to cut business taxes, because that will “send the message that NH is open for business.” It’s uncertain who will be hearing that siren call – but if they do, they may decide that our utility costs, crumbling infrastructure, limited telecommunications options, property taxes, and failure to invest in higher education may not be what they’re looking for. One thing you can count on though, if all the business tax cuts are enacted, your property taxes will be going up. The money to run the state (even to run it as if it were going out of business) does have to come from somewhere, and that somewhere is your property. Other states have income and sales taxes. NH has you, the property owner. As businesses pay less and less of their fair share, you’ll be picking up the slack. Live free or die – and be sure to keep voting for the pledge takers.

Sununu wants to ensure that Medicaid beneficiaries work if they are able. I’m guessing that what he meant by that was the NH Health Protection Program, which is the NH version of expanded Medicaid. Most of the people who are enrolled in the NHHPP are low-wage workers – heck, some of them probably work at Waterville Valley. They already are working. The GOP is desperate to convince us that these folks are milking the system somehow to get health care benefits. Thing is – the NHHPP doesn’t pay the rent, buy the groceries, or put gas in the car. The people who make these claims either don’t understand how this works, or they don’t care, because it’s easier to get people all jacked up by lying to them. There are work requirements for food stamp recipients, by the way. You never hear about that, do you?

In this way when the legislature votes next year (and they will) to end the NHHPP, if they’ve told enough big lies, they’ll still get reelected. Even when 40,000 low-wage workers lose their health insurance.

None of this will help NH’s stagnant economy. As long as the state is stuck in reverse, there’s no hope of moving into the future. 

This was published as an op-ed in the December 9 edition of the Conway Daily Sun newspaper