Al Brandano has voluntarily dismissed his case against David Scanlan and the New Hampshire Secretary of State’s Office (SoS). Al has been trying, through the courts, to force the SoS to adhere to federal election law, which requires all Federal election records to be maintained for 22 months.
In the past, New Hampshire has allowed clerks to return the data cards from the AccuVote machines to LHS Associates, the third-party vendor, who then erases them, clearly violating the Civil Rights Act.
Related: Emergency Motion to Preserve Election Results
This is ironic because the NH AG’s Office, which has willingly ignored Federal law in its defense of the Secretary of State’s Office, has – in my opinion – been trying for years to link New Hampshire civil rights law to “hate speech” to use the former to intimidate and censor the latter. That’s just my opinion. The only other possible reason for their lawfare is constitutional ignorance or stupidity, so perhaps I am being too kind.
The ultimate purpose of the Civil Rights Act’s preservation and retention requirements for federal elections records is to “secure a more effective protection of the right to vote.”
Federal statutes require the records to be retained and in a form that can be examined at any time from the date of a federal election to 22 months to the day after. The towns responsible shall retain these records or, if state law requires them to be moved to some other location, by that custodian—in this case, the New Hampshire Secretary of State.
The materials covered by Section 301 extend beyond “papers” to include other “records.” Jurisdictions must therefore also retain and preserve records created in digital or electronic form.
The requirement is clearly outlined as necessary to protect the right to vote. The Federal government reserves the right to perform an audit at any time during the 22-month retention period, assuming the law has been followed.
Section 302 provides that any “person, whether or not an officer of election or custodian, who
willfully steals, destroys, conceals, mutilates, or alters any record or paper” covered by
Section 301’s retention and preservation requirement is subject to federal criminal penalties.
New Hampshire is literally over a barrel. Records were destroyed before the 22-month restriction, and, to the best of my knowledge, the election records stored on the data cards cannot be interpreted by just anyone. LHS is alleged to have some sort of proprietary code that is unreadable should a federal or even local official try to examine it.
If true, NH and LHS are in violation of federal election law and the Civil Rights Act because the data is not, first and foremost, readable in the result of an audit. LHS may also be on the hook for failing to retain the records as “any person” who willfully destroys election records. At the same time, NH is guilty of not securing them knowing that this is what LHS will do and not requiring Clerks to secure them with the paper records when they are sent to the State for storage.
The State, in the form of the SoS and the AG, has been pushing back to avoid a court case in which these facts will become evident. Assuming they are aware of them and their deliberate violation of federal election law, I am forced to ask why. Are they hiding something or just indifferent to voting rights, civil rights, and laws related to Federal elections?
To be clear, I’m all for states being ungovernable, nullification, jury nullification, and general disregard for federal overreach, but none of that has come up in the paper war doing business as the legal system in New Hampshire. The state insists that plaintiffs have no standing or do not know what the law says or means.
The law says 22 months. It includes paper and electronic records. New Hampshire isn’t doing that/ Are we waiting for the federal government to sue the state?
Wouldn’t it be easier and waste fewer tax dollars to secure the digital records for 22 months in a readable form?
The Trump administration is coming, and I we’re about to find out.
