by Ed Naile
NH1 News seems to be the only statewide media, other than bloggers, interested in the possible loss of a US Senate seat to voter fraud. NH1 News has a detailed story here:
Hundreds Could Be Investigated for Voter Fraud in NH’s 2016 Elections
Finally, Secretary of State William Gardner is beginning to open the door to the possibility of voter fraud effecting statewide elections in NH. It is a breakthrough even though the numbers he uses are not what they seem.
Let us take a look at this one paragraph about the 6,000 General Election voters who somehow showed up in person to vote in a statewide election – but did not happen to have any legitimate identification on their person.
Check out this paragraph:
“Figures released earlier this year from the Secretary of State’s office indicate that nearly 6,000 first-time New Hampshire voters in the November election used an out-of-state identification, with many of those people casting ballots in towns in and around colleges and universities. All legal under state law, but adding fuel to arguments by New Hampshire Republicans who are advocating for changes to the state’s election laws.”
NH1 was told about 6,000 registered to vote and voted same-day using out of state driver’s licenses. Then the claim that is legal under state law. I would like to know which state law lets a non-resident vote in NH because I have yet to find one. You can use an out of state driver’s license in the extremely rare case you are in transition from one state to another – but temporary non-citizens must still follow their home state’s laws. There are 49 other states with various laws regarding their citizens voting in another state. It is illegal in all the states I have checked and in a Federal Election it is illegal and unconstitutional as well.
Then there is more:
“More than 4,000 of those 5,903 people using out-of-state licenses to register voted in towns with a high percentage of college students, such as Durham (home to the University of New Hampshire), Hanover and Lebanon (Dartmouth College), Keene (Keene State University), Plymouth (Plymouth State University), Rindge (Franklin Pierce University), Henniker (New England College), and the Manchester area (SNHU and Saint Anselm University).”
I have news for NH citizens who are reading this story and what Bill Gardner gave NH1 for numbers. It is very misleading.
I have a copy of the Durham Town Report to use as a reference. It says that just over 3,000 Durham “citizens” registered on November 8, 2016. But it also says just over 2,000 registered in February for the NH Primary. That would be 5,000 new “citizens” in NH in just two days in Durham alone.
Here is the fun part. Most UNH students have bulk mail, unless they are off campus. Half pay out-of-state tuition. How does a college student wind up on the returned envelope list of same day voters who used an out of state license as ID? The Post Office cannot find a UNH, or any other college student in a college town several weeks after using that address to vote?
Could it be they simply refuse to return the Secretary of State letter confirming the address they gave to vote? Did they transfer to another school within several weeks of voting in NH? Are they really current students?
Maybe the upcoming “investigation” NH is going to conduct into the 458 same-day ghost voters whose mail bounced back will shed some light on the subject. It would be nice if we investigated all the same day voters who used out-of-state driver’s licenses to vote in NH. How about counting the Presidential Primary as well? Is that too much to ask? It is the same problem.
Is anyone investigating the people who showed up to vote same-day with zero identification. That would be the ones who we take a picture and affidavit from? That wasn’t clear from Gardner’s interview.
I think if we used real numbers, instead of conveniently dodging the total amount of out-of-state voters, the number of people we need to investigate might be a bit higher than 458.
When this investigation is over it would be nice to see the names of the 480 ghost voters who might have swayed a US Senate race in NH.
Oh, but that public information is not public, nor is our taxpayer-payed-for statewide voter database, as they are in many other states – so how would anyone find out?