Al Brandano has been trying to get the Secretary of State’s Office to tell clerks to secure electronic data from AccuVote machines. Please don’t return them to LHS Associates, where they will be erased. Federal election records are to be held for 22 months.
The New Hampshire Department of Justice has objected and indicated that none of what Al claims is legitimate; he can’t do what he’s doing, and he has no standing. Put more simply, once again, there appears to be no path a citizen can take to remedy concerns about elections and the law. It’s business as usual when it comes to election or election law complaints in the Granite State.
nhdoj-seccuring-election-records-objectionAnd why would there be?
The Secretary of State’s office has admitted it has no responsibility.
The security of sealed boxes of ballots from an election relies on the local election officials who box and seal the ballots, the seal that documents the contents of a box with the signatures of the election officials who boxed and sealed the contents, the packaging tape used to secure the box, the tamper evident tape, the chain of custody record on the seal when transferred from the selectmen/moderator to the clerk, and the clerks “Sealed Ballot Boxes – Chain of Custody & Storage Log.
Citizens cannot appeal to the courts or the Secretary of State. Clerks are not required to reconcile absentee ballots. Poll workers are allowed to intimidate voters, while towns should ignore citizen appeals. And again, the SoS is not responsible for securing ballot records. There’s more, but that’ll do to get to the point.
It appears that citizens are required to sue their towns if they improperly secure election records. I take that to include the data cards from the AccuVote machines which are a machine record of all the ballots run through them.
So, let’s say the Clerk does this. They secure the electronic data, place it in a Faraday cage (one of those silver electronic parts bags, for example), box it up with their ballots, document it as required, and … send it to the Secretary of State’s office as required. Who is responsible for that now? It can’t be the towns they’ve documented the change in the chain of custody on their poorly taped boxes.
If they open the box, retrieve the data card, and send it back to LHS to be wiped (and if that violates federal election law – the 2024 data will have federal election data on it – what is the point (after the records are destroyed) of suing the secretary of state to “preserve records” that no longer exist?
I’m sure I’ve muddled the finer points, but from 30,000 feet, it sounds like a doom loop in which the goal is to ensure no one is accountable to anyone for whatever happens to the digital data of federal elections.
Does Trump’s DOJ have to sue the state, and what are the odds that it will be a priority even if you get their attention?
And if you care about election integrity, and everyone doing their best to thwart it in this soap opera says they do, perhaps you need to rethink this. To this layman, the objective seems to be the opposite of integrity, and state government institutions are aligned to protect that.
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