#

Granite State elections are free, fair, and accurate according to a report issued Thursday by the New Hampshire Secretary of State’s Special Committee on Voter Confidence. 

“Our electoral system works,” said Ambassador Dick Swett, the committee’s co-chair.

Secretary of State Dave Scanlan said while the report is non-binding, he and his staff will review the findings and address areas of concern identified during months of hearings and public listening sessions.

Scanlan said Thursday he hoped New Hampshire voters read the report and gain confidence in the elections held in the state. The report found more transparency is needed to make sure voters can see how the process works.

“Voters should be able to see the process and feel confident votes are collected, secure, and counted,” he said.

Ambassador Richard Swett, New Hampshire Secretary of State David Scanlan, and Bradford Cook speak to press about the Committee on Voter Confidence’s final report.

Scanlan created the committee to address concerns about the election process expressed by some Granite State residents. It was an issue former President Donald Trump put front and center in his 2024 presidential bid. While the committee found some minor concerns, Chair Bradford Cook said New Hampshire elections are free from systemic fraud and abuse and they are run by “friends and neighbors.”

“We listened to concerns, but all in all I think our report says and we believe New Hampshire elections are free from any systemic fraud,” Cook said. “Elections are designed to do one thing, elect the people who get the most votes or pass the resolutions that get the most votes, and our elections do that.”

A University of New Hampshire poll released earlier this month found 91 percent of Granite State residents are very or somewhat confident the November 2022 votes were counted accurately. Nationwide, 70 percent of Americans said in October voting was handled well.

Still, the report found more can be done to educate voters and election workers, adding to the confidence voters have in their elections. There is also a need to recruit more election workers, especially as many current election officials are aging and stepping down.

Swett said the committee heard from people who had specific complaints about the process or concerns about how some local election officials operated, which is reflected in the report. He wants to see the report open a dialogue in the state on how to strengthen the process.

“It has in it both the good, the bad, and the ugly,” Swett said. “Hopefully we’ll be able to be able to continue to improve the election process.”

He said that getting more people involved is vital to improving confidence and ensuring the process stays accurate and fair. He said that local involvement by regular voters for necessary to the functioning of that process.

“Being involved locally in your elections is what makes your elections safe and secure,” Swett said. “People need to get more involved by voting, volunteering, and making sure elections are fair and secure.”

The report was signed by seven of the eight committee members. The lone holdout was Windham’s Ken Eyring. He said Thursday he largely agrees with the report the committee issued but plans to present his own independent report to Scanlan that includes more emphasis on the concerns he heard from members of the public.

“I focused on capturing all public sentiment, positive and negative,” Eyring said. “I believe every concern should be presented (to Scanlan.)”

Eyring was involved in the Windham audit movement that questioned the results of that election after problems were found with the 2020 election in that town. An independent audit of Windham found folded ballots misread by machines resulted in skewed vote totals.

A subsequent state review also faulted local officials for compounding the errors by cutting corners ahead of the 2020 election according to a January letter from New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella and then-Secretary of State William Gardner to Windham town officials. Windham officials reportedly used an uncalibrated machine to tabulate the votes and skimped on a practice run that would have likely caught the issue before the election. The state required an election observer to oversee the election in 2022 in Windham to make sure it stayed free from potential problems.

Scanlan said his office is already working on addressing many of the concerns found by the committee, and he plans to bring proposals to the state’s Ballot Law Commission in the coming months for consideration.

The full committee report will be available online in the coming week.

Documents obtained by New Hampshire Journal confirm Bedford town officials discovered still more mishandled ballots in September 2021 and, like the 190 uncounted ballots from November, are attempting to hide their discovery from the public.

Meanwhile, an attorney with the New Hampshire Attorney General’s office has told NHJournal it is preparing to begin an investigation into the matter.

Bedford Town Manager Rick Sawyer sent members of the Town Council an email on Tuesday informing them more ballots from the 2020 election were discovered by town staff, who kept their existence secret until this week.

“I am making you aware that the Town Clerk (Sally Kellar) just walked into my office with an envelope that she says contains cast ballots from the November 2020 election and that were found in a voting box in the September 2021 Special Election and handed to her,” Sawyer wrote. “I advised her immediately to contact the town attorney and the appropriate state officials. If it is as described, these ballots were counted in the election but would not have been available for the recount. I don’t know why notification was not made immediately in September.”

Sources tell NHJournal town election officials have no plan to reveal this information to the public. It’s still not clear how many ballots were discovered in this second incident, and they refused to answer questions about the ballots, or even acknowledge their existence to NHJournal.

The 2020 state Senate election in Bedford was close enough for a recount between incumbent Democrat Jeanne Dietsch and Republican Denise Ricciardi. Dietsch called off the recount halfway through, leaving Ricciardi with a 409-vote margin.

Town officials say the 190 uncast absentee ballots they discovered last November and hid from the public for nearly a year would not have changed any election results.

Kellar hung up when asked questions about the ballots on Tuesday, after saying that no ‘uncast ballots’ were found, an apparent attempt to mislead the reporter. Sawyer, Town Moderator Bill Klein, and Town Council Chair David Gilbert, and Vice-Chair Bill Carter were all contacted for this story. They all failed to respond.

Senior Assistant Attorney General Anne Edwards said Wednesday her office is aware of the latest ballot problem in Bedford and is looking into the matter.

“Yesterday, we were made aware of an issue regarding ballots in Bedford. At this time, we do not have detailed information. We will be investigating this situation,” Edwards said. 

Senior Assistant Town Moderator Brian Shaughnessy played a leadership role in the November 2020 general election and now admits that he — and not the Attorney General’s Office — is the source of the decision to keep the mishandled ballots secret from the public and town council. But on Wednesday, he told NHJournal he was completely unaware of the discovery of any additional ballots or a second snafu.

“I’m a volunteer that gets appointed at the election,” he said. “I would not normally be kept in the loop.”

The town enacted a series of election reforms after the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office investigated, Shaughnessy said. He blamed the issues from 2020 on the unprecedented number of absentee ballots cast during the pandemic election. 

“It was a unique situation with 7,700 absentee ballots,” he said. “We generally don’t need 50 volunteers to open envelopes.”

At last week’s Town Council meeting, Shaughnessy insisted he and the other election officials “did the right thing” by keeping the story about the 190 ballots a secret for nearly a year. 

“We don’t work for you,” was Shaughnessy’s answer when councilors asked why elected representatives of Bedford’s citizens were left in the dark. Klein acknowledged those voters “were disenfranchised,” but he stood by the decision not to inform them.

Developing….

A year after the election that swept President Donald Trump out of office and New Hampshire Republicans into power, some 190 ballots cast by Bedford voters remain uncounted, NHJournal has learned.

The misplaced absentee ballots, which were discovered just days after the November 3, 2020 election, were kept secret from Town Council and the voters impacted for a year.

Town officials claim in a letter sent to the disenfranchised voters they kept the blunder secret under orders from the state Attorney General’s office, then headed by AG Gordon MacDonald.

The AG’s office disputes that claim.

“In reviewing this matter, this Office concludes that these 190 absentee ballots would not have impacted the outcome of any of the races on the ballot in Bedford during the 2020 general election,” Myles Matteson of the Attorney General’s office wrote Bedford town officials in a letter dated October 21, 2021. A copy of that letter is being sent to the 190 or so residents who cast votes last November by Bedford Town Clerk Sally Kellar and Town Moderator William Klein.

Those ballots remain unopened and uncounted.

According to Matteson, the existence of the uncast absentee ballots was discovered soon after the election.

“Deputy Clerk [Gloria] Mac Vane was reconciling the number of ballots distributed with the number of ballots cast. During this process, she discovered that there was a difference of approximately 190 fewer ballots cast than the number distributed. The amount of absentee ballots recorded received was 7,917. The total number of absentee ballots recorded cast was 7,727,” Matteson wrote.

“On November 8, 2020, Deputy Clerk MacVane attributed the cause of this discrepancy to a mistake made during the processing of absentee ballots on election day [sic].”

Because the ballots were kept secret, they were also kept out of the Bedford recount in the state Senate District 9 race between then-incumbent Jeanne Dietsch and newly-elected Republican Denise Ricciardi. That recount was held on November 1o, after the uncast ballots were discovered.

Dietsch called off the recount when the results began to benefit Ricciardi. Ricciardi’s official victory as reported by the Secretary of State’s office was 17,920 to 17,511, but that doesn’t include changes discovered in the uncompleted recount.

Why weren’t the ballots simply counted on November 8? Why was their existence kept secret? Why weren’t they used in the recount?

Kellar and Klein point the finger at the Secretary of State and Attorney General.

“When we discovered [the uncast ballots], we immediately reported it to the New Hampshire Secretary of State,” they wrote in their letter to the impacted Bedford voters. “We were advised to keep these ballots secure and to wait further instructions before taking any further action. The following week, we were informed that the matter had been referred to the NH Attorney General’s office for investigation. The Attorney General requested some information from us and we submitted it on November 19, 2020.

“We were told not to discuss this with anyone, not even the town council because it was a pending investigation,” Kellar and Klein said.

Officials in the AG’s office say they never instructed the town to keep the incident secret from either the Town Council or the general public.

This story is unfolding with the ongoing debate over the legitimacy of the 2020 election in the background. Political insiders with knowledge of the events speculate that decisions made by the Attorney General’s Office may have been influenced by events in Windham when voting machine error caused a significant error in the first results reported. Supporters of Trump’s frequently-repeated (and frequently debunked) claims the election was stolen due to widespread election fraud have used the Windham incident to support their calls for a statewide election audit in New Hampshire.

“The Attorney General’s Office saw this unfolding and they didn’t want to add fuel to the fire,” one source suggested.

MacDonald is currently serving as Chief Justice of the New Hampshire Supreme Court.

NOTE: This story has been updated to include new information revealed by the Attorney General’s office, and later confirmed by town officials.