Before and after serving for 2 years on the Election Law Committee of the NH House, I often heard from our friends on the left that there was no real need to attempt to tighten our flimsy election laws because there was actually no election fraud in New Hampshire. So, I was very interested to read the Todd Feathers article in the March 1 Union Leader on line about a University of New Hampshire student who registered to vote in Durham and also cast an absentee ballot in Massachusetts during the 2016 election.
The 21 year old recently admitted to committing voter fraud in Strafford County Superior Court. He was originally indicted on a felony voter fraud charge for actually voting in Durham after having voted in Massachusetts by absentee ballot, but it was reported that the Attorney General’s office, as part of a plea deal, knocked down that charge to a misdemeanor charge of providing a false statement on a voter registration form.
And if that aspect of the so-called “plea bargain” were not bad enough, this voter fraudster’s sentence of six months in a house of corrections was suspended on the condition that he complete 200 hours of community service and pay a $2,000 fine. Oh, and he lost the “right to vote” in New Hampshire.
Wow! That’s impressive enforcement of our election laws! Will his community service consist of lecturing to other students on the civic imperative of obedience to the law in a civilized society?
The AG’s office was apparently ready to prove, with little difficulty, that this college student mailed an absentee ballot to the clerk in his hometown of Dracut, Mass, and two days later signed a voter registration form in Durham attesting to the fact that he “was not domiciled or voting in any other state or any other city/town.”
As a lawyer, I can well appreciate prosecutorial discretion and its use to obtain a conviction for something that might not otherwise be readily susceptible to proof beyond a reasonable doubt, under the theory that something is always better than nothing. But when the facts in the case are, well, the facts, and are easily proved by documentary evidence, why should a prosecutor (a) knock down a charge that imperils the essence of our republican form of government; and (b) agree to a sentence that insults the legitimate voter in our state?
Supposedly this prosecution is the first of a series of four voter fraud cases being brought by our AG arising from the 2016 election, so it is probably reasonable to expect a similar outcome, or worse, in the remaining cases.
The natural questions that follow from this absurdity are: Why was this criminal charge knocked down by the prosecutors from a felony to a misdemeanor? In what world of logic was this “sentence” appropriate? What message does this prosecution and sentence send to others who commit or are inclined to commit voter fraud?
And, of course, we all now know for sure that there is no voter fraud in New Hampshire.
As is frequently said by a great commentator on our contemporary society, I am not making this up!
