Any member of the public may attend an election recount in Concord and visually review all the ballots cast. Yet these same members of the public may NOT file a Right to Know request to review those same ballots.
Related: A Fork in the Road For the “Windham Incident”!
This is the conundrum that Windham is currently facing. They had a recount for four state representative seats, which uncovered significant discrepancies. The public was invited to attend the recount, which was overseen by the Secretary of State.
Now Windham residents want to do a full recount and forensic audit to understand why this discrepancy occurred between the election results on four AccuVote machines on November 3, 2020, and the hand recount results on November 12, 2020.
For four months residents of Windham have waited for answers.
Rep. Edwards, Rock. 4; Rep. O’Hara, Belk. 9 introduced House Bill 480, “relative to verification of ballots cast in an election,” which proposes to designate “ballots” as public records under the Right to Know law.
Statement of Purpose. The state of New Hampshire recognizes that the fundamental right to vote includes the right for voters to have their votes counted and reported accurately, as provided in part I, articles 1, 2, 7, 8, and 11 and part II, articles 5, 32, 41, and 84 of the state constitution. Therefore, registered New Hampshire voters who were not candidates on election ballots they ask to review may view cast ballots after the recount period is over to ensure accuracy of the vote count and evaluate the performance of election officials. Review of ballots shall be in a manner that is least restrictive to the public and that is efficient and least cumbersome to the ballot custodian or designee.
The House Election Committee is holding a public hearing on HB 480 on March 5, 2021, at 9:30 am.
Please sign-in to support this bill using the House Sign-up link:
http://gencourt.state.nh.us/house/committees/remotetestimony/default.aspx
If you can, please testify during the hearing, or email as written testimony to the House Election Law Committee:
HouseElectionLawCommittee@leg.state.nh.us
