Will GOP Claims Of Voter Fraud in New Hampshire Be Dashed By The College Factor?
By Evan Lips | September 8, 2017, 17:11 EDT
Dartmouth College (Courtesy of YouTube) Thursday’s release of a report requested by Republican New Hampshire House Speaker Shawn Jasper exploring whether voter fraud may have occurred during the 2016 election did not address one key factor — the same-day registrations of college students hailing from various parts of the country.
Jasper, who last month directed the secretary of state and the commissioner of safety to cross-check voter and driver registrations to try to settle rumors that voter fraud may have tipped the election in favor of Democrats, did confirm that the state is investigating 196 instances in which individuals may have cast ballots in two different states.
But there may be a simpler explanation as to why only a little more than 15 percent of the 6,540 identified voters held New Hampshire IDs as of early August.
College.
A Washington Post report published Friday morning explored the scenario, first going after statements made in a column published at Breitbart.com and authored by Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach. Kobach, who is also helming President Donald Trump’s Election Integrity Commission, claimed that Jasper’s report shows that “now there’s proof” of voter fraud occurring within the Granite State.
“Kobach apparently made no attempt to contact voters who’d cast ballots but held out-of-state IDs,” wrote WaPo’s Dave Weigel. “Thursday night, The Washington Post asked voters who’d done so to tell their stories; three did so within 60 minutes — college students, who were living in New Hampshire but did not change their licenses.”
Jasper also apparently did not consider the factor, and a letter penned Wednesday by Secretary of State William M. Gardner and sent to Jasper did not mention colleges and universities affecting last November’s voter tally either. (See below)
Gardner’s letter refers to the federal Help America Vote Act, passed in 2002 following the razor-thin results of the 2000 presidential election. The legislation, according to Gardner, “required New Hampshire” to develop and implement a data matching system involving motor vehicle registrations and driver’s licenses with the records of registered voters.
Gardner stressed that the matching system “does not document how useful local [election] officials find the data.”
“Where discrepancies exist, the discrepancies vary from minor differences in the address to circumstances where the individual has provided different addresses,” Gardner wrote.
Nowhere in his five-page memo does Gardner touch on the college factor. The University of New Hampshire in Durham, for example, features more than 14,000 students, while Dartmouth College in Hanover boasts an enrollment of more than 6,000.
Jasper did not respond to a message left Thursday requesting comment.
The release of the Jasper report comes ahead of a meeting next week of members of the White House election integrity panel at Saint Anselm College in Goffstown. According to the commission’s schedule, Kobach and Gardner are slated to deliver introductory remarks at the meeting, set for 10 a.m. Tuesday.
Topics of discussion include “Historical Election Turnout Statistics and the Effects of Election Integrity Issues on Voter Confidence,” and “Current Election Integrity Issues Affecting Public Confidence.”
On Friday afternoon New Hampshire GOP chairman Jeanie Forrester released a prepared statement regarding the report.
“I want to thank Speaker Jasper and the dedicated members of our state government who sought this information regarding same day registrations from 2016 using out-of-state IDs. The most troubling piece of this report was the roughly 200 voters that may have voted twice in multiple states, uncovered by the new crosscheck program. We must support investigations into these cases to ensure integrity at the ballot box.”
“While the New Hampshire Democrat Federal Delegation engages in a public squabble with New Hampshire’s Democrat Secretary of State, New Hampshire Republicans are working hard to ensure every eligible New Hampshire voter can vote while strengthening voter integrity.”
Read Gardner’s memo:
2017-09-06 NH Dep of State Jasper Letter by Evan on Scribd
Read Speaker Jasper’s request:
2017-08-16 Jasper Letter to NH Secy of State by Evan on Scribd
