HB 491: Overvoted Ballots
dsumneri...@gmail.com
On March 5, House Election Law Committee recommended ITL (kill bill) 11-9 party-line vote for HB 491 (overvoted ballots), 11-9. ALL Rs voting “kill.”
Reps. Torosian, Prudhomme-O’brien, Griffin spoke against.the bill
1. Sample ballots are available online. No excuse for voters to overvote.
2. we shouldn’t have “different/special classes” of voters.
3. not appropriate for moderators in hand count towns to look at ballots and notify voters of overvotes so they can correct them.
4. voters in handcount towns wouldn’t have the same opportunity to correct overvotes.
Rep. Lane spoke against the ITL recommendation:
1. Often it’s the computer, not the voter making the error.
2. Doesn’t affect hand count towns.
3. Doesn’t create a “special class” of voters.
You can contact committee members about your response to their vote here:
See the request for the AG to investigate the high overvoted ballot rate (particularly with absentee ballots) here. It has received no response.
Attached is my testimony on HB 491. See p. 3 for common reasons the optical scan misreads valid votes as over votes and four known possibilities for fraud with overvoted ballots. Two suggestions for improvement are included in the proposed amendment the full House will consider April 9. See attachment.
Instead of asking the legislature to codify this federal HAVA requirement in 2003, Deputy Secretary of Scanlan and then Assistant Attorney General Bud Fitch asked to exempt ballots from public records law as a non-germane amendment to a HAVA required bill.
People who know about voter disenfranchisement, probably mostly Democratic voters, and fraud possibilities with overvoted ballot: the Secretary of State, the Attorney General, Governor Sununu, current members of the House Election Law Committee (2018 committee knew of three) members of the NH media, members of the town and city clerks association, everyone who has read my testimony on HB 491, staff members in Sen. Shaheen and Rep. Kuster’s offices and the US Department of Justice (2018-20).
More about overvoted ballots here:
"If the voting machine can’t understand your intention when you fill out a ballot, the Secretary of State thinks you are stupid. And he thinks that stupid people’s vote should not count. Republican members of the House Election Law Committee seem to agree with him."
What you can do:
1. Share this information with others
2. Contact your representative, get him/her to commit to voting against the committee ITL (kill) recommendation and convince a colleague of the opposing party to do the same.
3. Began demanding significant changes in the Secretary of State and Attorney General’s offices.