Governor Sununu, Members of the Executive Council, my name is Dr. David Strang. I am a partner in Central NH ER Associates. I am a former Chair of the EMS Coordinating Board for the State of NH.
We want to thank David Strang for this Op-Ed. If you have an Op-Ed or LTE
you want us to consider, please submit it to skip@ or steve@granitegrok.com.
I am a member of the NH Medical Society and I am the current Chair of the Advisory Council for the NH Prescription Drug Monitoring Program.
I am here today to speak to the nomination of Attorney General MacDonald to the Supreme Court, the highest court in our State of New Hampshire.
I am a former client of AG MacDonald when he was employed at the law firm of Nixon Peabody. He represented my medical group several years ago when Governor Hassan attempted to steal $200 million dollars in private JUA reserve funds in order to balance the state budget.
Gordon and his colleagues did a fantastic job in stopping this theft and I and hundreds of medical providers across the State are grateful for his efforts. But as grateful as I am for that, I also believe he is unfit for both his current office of Attorney General and that of Supreme Court Chief Justice.
When it comes to concerns of voter fraud, his office has failed the people of New Hampshire, repeatedly.
In the most recent General Election of Nov. 3rd, four candidates all on one side of the political ticket in Windham gained over 6% in a hand recount and one candidate from the opposing political party lost 2%.
Secretary of State William Gardner has repeatedly stated that NH has NEVER seen changes of this magnitude between the initial machine count and the subsequent hand recount.
It has been 10 weeks since this disparity first became known and Gordon has refused to look at either the paper ballots or the four Windham voting machines.
Bernard Campbell the town counsel for Windham has asked Gordon to investigate.
The Ballot Law Commission has asked Gordon to investigate.
On Dec. 13, I wrote him a 9-page letter complete with statistics and graphs asking him to investigate and it was ignored for weeks.
Only when Sen. Bob Giuda called him in outrage at his lack of reply did he finally respond.
When we met with him on Jan. 4th, he claimed he had no legal authority to look into this matter despite RSA 7:6-C clearly stating that “Upon receipt of a signed written complaint, or upon his or her own motion, the attorney general may in his or her discretion, conduct investigations to determine whether any violation of the election laws has occurred.”
He refuses to look at the Windham voting machines, stating that in 25 years, we’ve never had a problem with the Accuvote 2000 machine before, the only machine used in the 85% of NH towns that machine count their ballots.
When the Space Shuttle Challenger blew up on takeoff in 1986, would we have declined to look into that anomaly under the silly excuse, “it’s never blown up before?”
Since that Jan. 4th meeting, the Windham Town Moderator Peter Griffin, Asst. Town Moderator Barbara Dunn and the Windham Select Board have all joined the chorus asking for him to look at this anomaly.
AG MacDonald has responded only by asking for documents from Windham but still refuses to look at the ballots or the four Windham Accuvote 2000 voting machines.
It has now been 10 weeks since this anomaly was uncovered and he still refuses to recognize the elephant in the room.
I can think of no other aspect of democracy as sacred, as inviolate as that of the vote.
As the citizens of NH are not legally empowered to look at ballots or voting machines themselves, we, therefore, entrust the sanctity of our elections to officials such as AG MacDonald to protect us against fraud and ensure that those we chose to represent us in ANY office, are the ones on whom that title is bestowed.
When officials like AG MacDonald violate that trust, that responsibility, then NH is a lamb for the slaughter when it comes to election fraud. We are utterly helpless with no protection whatsoever.
The citizens of NH deserve better from their state officials. I strongly urge you in no uncertain terms, to refuse this ill-conceived and undeserved nomination. Thank you.
