Investigation of Voter Affidavit Fraud Abandoned by NH AG

CONCORD, NH — Investigations into thousands of affidavit voters who were able to cast ballots in New Hampshire without identification during the 2012 and 2014 cycles have been dropped by the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office due to lack of manpower to complete the investigations, according to the state official in charge of investigating voter fraud in the Granite State. Brian Buonamano, an assistant attorney general with the NH AG’s Office and the point person on investigating elections, said on Friday after an initial investigation into tens of thousands of affidavits in 2012, the effort was abandoned.

“It was extremely burdensome and we basically couldn’t manage it,” he said last week. “There’s no staff to do those investigations.”

Up until spring 2016, Stephen Lebonte, the former elections division contact with the NH DOJ, stated that the department was still eyeing thousands of thousands of affidavits votes cast in the 2012 presidential election after New Hampshire approved its voter ID law.

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Back in 2013, LaBonte and Deputy Secretary of State David Scanlan confirmed that both departments were analyzing the more than 20,000 affidavit votes cast in the 2012 election, including voters who registered to vote but couldn’t prove identity, age, or citizenship but were allowed to anyway, voters that couldn’t document where they lived but were allowed to vote anyway, and voters with no identification at all but were allowed to vote anyway. Altogether, of the more than 20,000 voters, about 4,400 voters could not be reached by mail or did not return information to the Secretary of State’s Office.

The investigation into all the voter affidavits was supposed to be completed by July 2013. At the time, officials thought they could get it done and the investigatory process would be worth it. Somewhere along the way, the investigation was dropped.

Buonamano said the NH DOJ has been “begging” for staffing from the Legislature and attached a fiscal note to the original provisions added to the state’s voter identification law to allow the few people in the state without an acceptable ID to vote. However, the staffing was never funded.

All the affidavits, returned cards and envelopes are “sitting in boxes,” he said, essentially collecting dust.

Buonamano said state officials are attempting to have the process of investigations in the future be given to the Secretary of State’s Office, a transfer that would require amended legislation.

No major results changed

In 2013, it was noted that even if all the 4,400 affidavits were illegal voters for one side of the political aisle or the other, the results of the major races would not have been influenced by any presumed fraud.

The spread between President Barack Obama and Republican challenge Mitt Romney was more than 40,000 votes, 10 times the amount of the untracked affidavits. Democrat Maggie Hassan trounced Republican Ovide Lamontagne by more than twice that, nearly 84,000 votes. In the Congressional races, Carol Shea-Porter, the Democrat, bested incumbent U.S. Rep. Frank Guinta by 13,000 votes while Democratic challenger Ann McLane Kuster topped U.S. Rep. Charles Bass, the Republican incumbent, by more than 16,000 votes.

Lower races – some that ended up in recounts with wins by a handful of votes – may have influenced by those affidavits.

During the 2014, there were more than 33,000 same-day voter registrations, according to the Secretary of State’s Office, with officials eyeing nearly 3,000 affidavits who couldn’t prove where they lived and hundreds more who were allowed to vote without identification.

Similar to 2012, the races for governor and Senator were won by Democrats by wide margins – incumbent U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen beating challenge Scott Brown, a Republican, by around 15,000 votes. Hassan easily beat Republican Walt Havenstein by more than 25,000 votes.

The Congressional races were also not close with Guinta beating Shea-Porter by nearly 9,000 votes and Kuster beating Republican challenger Marilinda Garcia by more than 23,000 votes.

Lower races, however, some which came down to a handful of votes in recounts, could have been affected by any fraud uncovered by investigators.

The same cannot be said for 2016, however, when it comes to the major races.

Last year, there were about 7,500 affidavits to eye, according to press reports, with more than 1,400 affidavit voters having no identification but the voters were allowed to vote, according to the New Hampshire Union Leader. Another 6,000 voters used an out-of-state license or non-driver’s ID to prove who they were. Of those 6,000, a little less than 3,000 used Massachusetts IDs.

Any alleged or presumed fraud that occurred this last election year could have potentially played a role in altering the U.S. Senate.

Last year, U.S. Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-NH, lost her seat by 743 votes to Hassan, one of the tightest races in the state since the 1974 race which Louis Wyman won in a second recount over John Durkin by 2 votes. A special election was held the next year which Durkin won handily.

If, as an example, 24 people committed to casting one illegal extra vote for Ayotte in the 31 polling locations in Concord, Manchester, and Nashua (744 votes), she would have been re-elected. That’s how easy fraud could be perpetrated in New Hampshire – and there’s nothing stopping anyone from doing that.

The investigation into those affidavits has not begun but there were registration anomalies and irregularities found all around the state, many in college communities, including more than 3,100 same-day registrations in Durham, where UNH is located, bumping up the community’s voter registration tally to 16,443 even though only about 15,000 residents in the community.

In 2010, there were only 49

Both the 4,400 and 7,500 numbers are massive ones when considering that in 2010, before passage of the state’s Voter ID law, there were only 49 voters allowed to vote in New Hampshire for the first time without an ID out of 23,512 new voter registrations that year.

Of those 49, according to the NH AG, four had mail problems and were investigated for fraud in 2011. All four were cleared as having voted “in conformance with New Hampshire law.”

Similarly, in the 2016 New Hampshire presidential primary, essentially a beauty pageant for the two private political clubs, less than 500 affidavits were cast, according to state officials, even though the primary was one of the highest in its 100-year history.

Recent vote fraud cases

The NH AG’s Office has filed a number of voter fraud charges and found a Manchester man guilty of voting in both Salem and Windham, a Windham woman casting a ballot for her son, and a Massachusetts man who had been illegally voting in the first-in-the-nation presidential primary since the 1980s.

While these cases are not “massive” voter fraud, they are voter fraud just the same. And combined with the thousands of affidavit votes sitting in boxes on North State Street, who knows how many political races during the past few years have been altered due to fraudulently cast votes.