Ann Marie presented the following to her Town Clerk and Moderator, and presented the same Powerpoint presentation, with her Selectman, Kim Abare, to the Secretary of State, Dave Scanlan. If you have any questions please email action@nhpatriothub.org and we will connect you with Ann Marie.
My thoughts on resolving these issues are two-fold. Try to change some “low-hanging fruit” ideas to improve elections in town just to get the ball rolling. I listed them below, if anyone would like to copy this. Second, the John Birch Society has a program called the “100 / 10 / 6.” I won’t go into the details, but the “100” refers to every person in the group attempting to get to 100 people who they reach out to to discuss civics. Imagine if every one of the existing patriots in NH had 100 citizens they could reach out to! That would make an impact. We need people in numbers to create change.
My hope is that all of you continue forward. Resistance is only a speed bump and a learning experience!
As they say at IV3….onward!
Ann Marie
Pelham, NH
| Request | Response |
| All voters come back to town hall with ID every three years to confirm they still live in the town (I got this idea from the Pelham Library; this is their requirement. The library told me there are 5K residents on their list, if Pelham has 9K voters, town hall would only need to account for 4K voters.) | We’re doing that, we’ll be sending 30-day letters to voters who haven’t voted in the last two election cycles. |
| When an RSA calls for making the checklist available inside town hall, post it online as well. | We can’t do that because there is a fee for the checklist. That fee goes back to the Supervisor’s of the Checklists to help them with their work. |
| Organize the checklist by street address, rather than last name. (If someone is trying fraudulently to register at your address or a neighbor’s, how will you know their last name? You won’t. But you certainly will know if you look at the address!) | When you get the copy of the checklist, which we can send to you electronically, you can sort by address. |
| Can a citizen come in and look at the entire current NH voter roll free of charge? | Yes, at the State Archives. |
| I explained that there was a big concern about illegal aliens voting in NH. In my investigating I learned that college enrollment is an easy way to vote if you aren’t from the US. For example, UNH, which has a large foreign resident enrollment, gives a person a college ID which they then use to vote. | There is no database that allows them to look up people and confirm that they are US citizens. Other states have laws in place that offer “provision ballots.” (This is when a person shows up with no paperwork identifying them as a US citizen, they allow that person to fill out a ballot, but keep it aside form counting until confirmation can be made). |
| I told him about IV3 and the fact that they have identified 30K people in NH who have submitted a change of address form with the USPS and should be removed from their town’s voter roll. | They have removed Election Net and are using a new system which is now live, they are just working out small bus in the system. |
| I asked him to remove this verbiage from the Election Procedure Manual page 199: “Even if it is proven in court that the person is not permitted to have a primary residence at the claimed domicile, that does not take away the person’s right to vote using that address as their voting domicile.” | Well, we have to keep that in there for homeless people. |
| How do we go about adding the notary back to the absentee ballots? (With an explanation of the problems and why the notary was so important.)* | The courts would have to determine that. |
* I even read him the Opinions of the Justices from 1921 (emphasis mine, and the document is attached below). It reads:
The legislature has no power to authorize the exercise of the right of suffrage, at the biennial elections of state officers, by electors who are not present at the polls either because of absence from the municipality in which the election is held or because of physical disability. The foregoing limitation has no application to legislation providing for the election of presidential electors.
Although advisory opinions such as we now are giving are not judgments establishing the law, in practice they appear to be relied upon as authority as fully as decisions in litigated cases.
His response was that since then, there have been other precedents set. Laws have been put in place to allow absentee voting. But if those laws were unconstitutional, shouldn’t they be nullified?
My ideas for changes in any town:
1. Name changes on tax cards prompt a 30-day letter.
This means, more likely than not, the house has been sold. (Unless, of course, there is an obvious alternate reason).
2. To reduce same-day registrations, install programs to entice people to register before an election.
Remind residents coming to Town Hall to register first time vehicles that they can also register to vote. And/or, in an effort to increase voters, send a letter to new home sales reminding them to come in and register.
3. When making the public version of the checklist available for viewing at Town Hall, sort by address. It is difficult to identify people who may not belong on the voter roll by a last name. Identification is easier by address.
4. The Supervisors of the Checklist should be making minutes of their meetings. Other towns do this and we should too.
5. Maintain a log book of complaints/issues on election night to be used by all election officials all election officials. Books should be signed by election officials and analyzed for ways to improve the voting process.
Opinion of the Justices
