Secretary for voter rights

By JESSIE SALISBURY    Nashua Telegraph    08 August 2005
 WILTON ? The new federal law Help America Vote Act was designed to prevent ?another Florida,? New Hampshire Secretary of State William Gardner told a group gathered in the Town Hall courtroom to discuss the movie ?Invisible Ballots.? The act, however, has taken away some of a state?s ability to control its elections.

Garner was joined in the discussion by two of his assistants, Anthony Stevens and Thomas Manning.

The discussion, moderated by Nancy Tobi of Democracy for New Hampshire, followed the showing of ?Invisible Ballots,? which outlines the privatization of the election process through the use of electronic voting. Elections could be controlled by companies that do not allow voters to inspect their software and do not provide a paper record for a recount.

About 50 people watched the movie, and most joined the 1? hour discussion that followed.

Gardner said he sympathized with the people in the film but added that the situation does not exist in this state.

?We were the first state to have a law requiring everyone to vote on a paper ballot,? he said.

Some towns do have electronic counting of those ballots.

The federal government?s intrusion into the election process was a result of Watergate, Gardner said.

?The first law set a minimum standard for federal elections. New Hampshire?s standards were higher, so we were exempt,? he said.
The Motor Voter Law, requiring states to register voters along with their cars, was the next step, an attempt ?to make one size fit all,? he said. New Hampshire got around that one as well by permitting same-day registration at the polling place.

To prevent problems with registration, such as what happened in Florida during the 2000 presidential election, the voting act provides for ?provisional ballots,? allowing those not on the checklist to use another ballot that would be counted after verification perhaps a week later. Same-day registration also eliminates that section.

Under the Motor Voter Law, you don?t have to register in the town you live in, Gardner said. ?In my opinion, that was a major factor in Florida. People weren?t on the checklists because they had registered someplace else.?

Two parts of the voting act affect the state, however ? creating a statewide voter checklist and providing a machine at each polling place for use by handicapped voters, particularly the blind.

Manning said they checked all the polling places in the state.

?Our state constitution requires every voting place to have one voting machine of some type,? he said.

After some discussion of types of machines, he said, ?What we will ultimately purchase will be a sophisticated pen that will mark a paper ballot so it can be counted like the rest.?

Stevens discussed the statewide checklist, saying it was simply a compilation of all the checklists in each town.

?So far,? he said, ?it contains only the name, party affiliation and physical address. The federal government says we have to have one. We are protected more than any other state.?

Questions were raised concerning voters who do not use a physical address but a post office box, but there was no ready answer.

New Hampshire has received about $17 million under the voting act.

?We don?t have to replace punch cards? since they were gotten rid of in 1986, Gardner said. The money will be used for the required handicapped-accessible machines. ?We hope, after we buy the machines, we?ll have the money (in the bank) to maintain them.

?The whole election system paper trail is very important to me,? he said. ?This ?one size fits all? is not good for the country. We have a unique system that would be difficult to do in some other states. We lost what we had that really worked (control of federal elections), and I?m afraid we will lose all control. It is important that we don?t lose how we elect our officials.?

He noted there ?are about a dozen bills in Congress right now? dealing with elections.

Several people asked about eliminating voter fraud, such as people voting twice or ineligible voters being able to vote. Gardner said there are laws on the books and the statewide list should help.

?We can?t have a perfect election with human beings running it, but we have to be able to guarantee a fair election,? he said in summing up the evening. ?People support the machines because they feel the machine will eliminate the bias, that machines are better. But as we saw (in the film), there are people behind the machines (designers, engineers, etc.).?

New Hampshire does not have to buy voting machines, he said.

The program was part of the continuing film series ?Confronting the Issues,? presented Sunday afternoons through Aug. 28 by Democracy for New Hampshire and Women Making a Difference.

On Aug. 14, the film will be ?Questions Concerning 9/11 and American Empire,? a speech by Dr. David Ray Giffin, theology professor emeritus at Claremont Theology School in California.

Films are free, but donations are accepted.