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NH Election lockdown begins: the "official" response to NH recount investigations

NH officials have decided to respond to the evidence exposed by citizen watchdogs in the NH recounts pointing to serious breaches in security, procedures, and laws. Yes boys and girls, they are going to make things even less transparent.

SOURCE:Nashua Telegraph

Getting recount may get harder

Albert Howard, you could be the last also-ran candidate for president to get a statewide recount of the primary vote.

The Ann Arbor, Mich., Republican received only 44 votes in the primary on Jan. 8, but New Hampshire law allows any finisher to request a recount. Those who don’t come within 3 percent of the winner have to pay for it.

As The Sunday Telegraph first reported, Howard got the $60,000 to make the request from an online fundraising effort led by a hard-core North Carolina supporter of GOP candidate Ron Paul, a Texas congressman.

After getting only 2 percent, Rep. Dennis Kucinich, of Ohio, paid more than $20,000 to count about 30 percent of the Democratic presidential ballots here.

Both recounts led to a flurry of sometimes hysterical, Internet-driven charges that New Hampshire’s ballot custody standards somehow left the state ripe for abuse.
Secretary of State Bill Gardner has supported a late-emerging amendment to raise the bar for a recount request. It would be added to a measure (SB 492) dealing with filling vacancies on primary ballots.

Sen. Jackie Cilley, D-Barrington, sought the bill, which allows the party to fill a vacancy if a candidate jumps from one office sought to another that’s also vacant.
Cilley did just that, recruited at the eleventh hour to drop her bid for the House in 2006 and instead to run for the Senate seat she now holds.

Originally, the thought was to permit only those who get at least 25 percent of the vote to seek a recount. This was lowered to 9 percent, but only for presidential candidates, because that’s the threshold for candidates to get delegate votes.
Rep. Shawn Jasper, R-Hudson, is squarely behind the change and is optimistic both parties will embrace this reform.

“It’s just ridiculous how much time and effort Bill’s office had to engage in to satisfy the ludicrous recount requests we had,’’ Jasper said. “This sets an appropriate standard any candidate has to meet to be considered credible enough to get a recount.’’

A working group of the House Election Laws Committee has endorsed the change.
By ntobi at 04/06/2008 - 12:10 | Action alerts | Fair elections | Voting in NH | login or register to post comments

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Comments from the Telegraph site

From BlackBoxVoting:

"Hysterical". This is an example of journalistic sloppiness. Landrigan has inserted his own subjective and perjorative characterization of the findings of citizen observers. He should

(1) Familiarize himself with what the actual findings are

(2) Review New Hampshire elections law, where he will discover that the recount violated at least four federal and New Hampshire laws

(3) Do a quick news search, which will reveal that precisely the issues raised by "hysterical" citizen observers were exploited in a ballot tampering scandal in Maine referred to as "Ballot-gate." Maine beefed up its chain of custody laws and sent to an aide to the Maine speaker of the House to jail. New Hampshire did nothing and continued to use ballot containers that, as reporters in Maine observed, "are an open invitation to tampering."

(4) Next, Landrigan should review the videotaped evidence collected by at least six different election watchdog groups over a period of four weeks. Perhaps now would be a good time for Landrigan to issue a correction and for the Nashua Telegraph to do a real article on the breakdown in chain of custody in the 2008 New Hampshire recount.

This kind of journalism is not what the founders had in mind when they envisioned a media that would act as a check and balance.

"No government ought to be without censors...and where the press is free, no one ever will...it would be undignified and criminal to pamper the former (the government) and persecute the latter (its critics)." -- Thomas Jefferson


From BlackBoxVoting

And another point of view, from another writer:

"For a real-world case where the ballot chain-of-custody issue was a complete and unmitigated disaster, look no further than last month's New Hampshire state primaries...cameras in hand, they captured on video a perfect storm of arrogance, indifference, and incompetence on the part of New Hampshire's elections officials. If you're a member of the media who's covering the elections beat, then grill elections officials about chain of custody and report the results to the public."

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080221-a... -chain-of-custody-issue.html

From Patriot Henry

"Secretary of State Bill Gardner has supported a late-emerging amendment to raise the bar for a recount request."

Mr. Gardner will support anything that protects himself from criminal prosecution for violation of state and federal election laws.

Shame on this author, paper, and all citizens who fail to objectively research and investigate the serious problems in the New Hampshire election process.
By ntobi at Sun, 04/06/2008 - 3:23pm | login or register to post comments

With respect to Secretary Gardner

I disagree with Patriot Henry's assessment of our Secretary. I also disagree with our Secretary's desire to make the process less transparent.

The State of Maine in 1994 had a recount rigging incident, and responded in a different way. They came up with some pretty good chain of custody legislation.

I'd like to see NH do the same.

This circling the wagons is counter productive.
By ntobi at Mon, 04/07/2008 - 8:26am | login or register to post comments