by Ed Naile
I was informed yesterday that a radio program discussing voter fraud in NH featured Secretary of State William Gardner essentially “opening the books” on voter fraud statistics and prosecutions to a reporter.
Here is what I found:
NHPR: Bill Gardner on Voter Fraud
And as I read the entire article I could not find one instance where any person was charged with voter fraud – and who then went to trial to defend himself. The instances presented were of people who admitted they did something wrong. The cases of voter fraud, actually prosecuted, were cherry-picked. No one falsely claiming domicile has been prosecuted.
So, it looks like the “intent,” by non-NH citizens to become domiciled in NH is good enough proof of domicile to vote here never been challenged. Why bother having a discussion of voter fraud in New Hampshire if you leave out the voter fraud everyone is upset about?
As for the “busses…”
Mr. Gardner should know full well that some 20 AmeriCorps workers showed up in a van in Deerfield in 1996 and voted from a nonexistent address on a non-existent road. The returned envelopes from that incident were given to the Coalition of NH Taxpayers in 2000 as one of the first pieces of evidence we collected in our own voter fraud investigations. Officials in Deerfield tried to get the NH Secretary of State and AG to do something – to no avail. That is how we wound up with the evidence.
It didn’t go away this time!
Mr. Gardner himself admitted to having out-of-state AmeriCorps workers show up to vote in his own Ward in Manchester – right in front of him. This was 2008.
Drew Cline: Bill Gardner knows that voter fraud happens in New Hampshire
“The people that ran the polling place called me over, and said they had three people who didn’t know whether they could vote, and they wanted me to answer the questions,” he explained in our interview. “So, I go over, there were two young men and a young woman, and they were AmeriCorps (volunteers).
“I said, ‘Where is your home?’ The woman said, ‘Washington State.’ I said, “Why didn’t you vote in Washington State?’ She said she missed the deadline, but she really wanted to vote. She said she was going back to Washington state the first of December. I said, well that should answer it for yourself as to whether this is now your home.
“But then one of the guys said, wait, you don’t know for sure, you might fall in love with a guy tonight. You don’t know for sure.” The woman registered but wound up not voting. The two men did.”
Ok, maybe Gardner’s AmeriCorps workers showed up in a car instead of a bus this time. But why were they in Manchester? Who will ever know. Mr. Gardner didn’t get a picture or take names – did he?
The Coalition of NH Taxpayers worked with Project Veritas during the 2016 NH Primary. There are two hours of tape the NH AG subpoenaed from James O’Keefe. I assume the NH AG has looked at the tape since it was worth the subpoena. If you want to see exactly what voter fraud in NH looks like – there is a place to start.
The reporter from this voter fraud article seems a bit deflated after being offered open access to Gardner’s office. Who wouldn’t?
The thousands of returned 2012 same-day envelopes of people who voted in a Federal Election with no ID are still squirreled away in boxes in the Elections Division of the NH AG’s Office. Why would anyone think 2018 will be different?
Here is a question the reporter should ask Mr. Gardner:
If NH is exempt from the National Voter Rights Act of 1993 because we have “same-day” registration and we exist under the fallacy that NH has no way of defining “domicile” or “intent” of the voter – why does NH let citizens of other states that do have residency laws – vote here? How is that legal or constitutional?
Or ask him this question:
If the 44 other states under the National Voter Rights Act are required to verify their statewide databases by crosschecking with their list of licensed drivers to keep non-residents and non-citizens off the voter rolls – why doesn’t NH? Are we “exempt” from having clean voter lists?
From reading this story, it appears Mr. Gardner gave the reporter the wrong list of election law “prosecutions.” CNHT has a much better one.