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Bill would form panel to study ballot-law commission findings after volunteers documented hundreds of alleged election irregularities
Summary
Representative J.D. Bernardi introduced HB 448 to create a committee to study violations documented to the Ballot Law Commission after a volunteer audit of a 2022 Senate district election. Supporters called for training, auditing and penalties; Secretary of State David Scanlon urged caution about punitive measures and stressed ongoing training.
House Bill 448 would establish a committee to study violations cited to the Ballot Law Commission after a citizen-led audit of the 2022 Senate District 24 election. Representative J.D. Bernardi told the committee volunteers spent hundreds of hours documenting what they characterized as more than 100 violations across towns in the district and asked that the legislature look at training, auditing and attaching penalties for election-law violations.
Bernardi described concerns including absentee ballot controls and reconciliation, chain-of-custody problems with ballot boxes, missing signatures and checklist maintenance that left many registered voters listed after they moved. He said the Ballot Law Commission validated the volunteers’ documentation and referred the matter to the Attorney General, but that no court enforcement followed because, Bernardi said, New Hampshire election statutes lack attached penalties for many procedural violations.
Secretary of State David Scanlon told the committee the state’s election system relies on citizen-run local officials and that the office has vastly increased training and uniform procedures over the last two decades. Scanlon said many problems in the volunteer report are clerical or technical and urged caution about overly punitive responses that could deter people from serving as local election officials. “We do a significant amount of training,” he said, while also acknowledging the need for audit and remedial steps in some cases.
Al Brandano, a citizen who helped compile the volunteer audit, told the committee volunteers had documented hundreds of items with photos and cited the chain of custody as a central problem. Brandano and other witnesses urged the legislature to create a study committee and consider penalties for habitual offenders. The committee heard public testimony and questions; no formal committee vote was recorded at the hearing.
