NH House Leaders Comment on Project Veritas’ Investigation, Call for Voting Reform

The following joint press release was released by the leadership of the New Hampshire legislature as a direct result of Project Veritas’ voter fraud investigation:

House Leaders Comment on Video Showing Ease of Election Fraud in New Hampshire, Call for Reform

CONCORD – House Speaker William O’Brien (R-Mont Vernon) and Majority Leader D.J. Bettencourt (R-Salem) today offered the following comments in response to the stunning video by Project Veritas outlining the ease of committing voter fraud in New Hampshire.  The video was taped Tuesday at polling locations during the presidential primary.

House Speaker William O’Brien “This video has placed a shocking exclamation point on the need for immediate reform to New Hampshire’s election laws to ensure that voter fraud does not taint the rights of our citizens to have their votes counted in an honest, responsible way and impact our state.  The nation has been horrified by the absurd level of ease of voting illegally here, and we should all be embarrassed that the state has not moved more quickly to fix a gaping hole in our laws.

“For years, clean election advocates have been warning the Attorney General and the Legislature about both the opportunity for fraud and evidence of electoral fraud.  The consistent response was, ‘Move Along; No Fraud to See Here.’  As a freshman, serving on the Election Law Committee, I began my efforts to bring integrity to the voting process in New Hampshire, which sadly have not yet been resolved.

“This Legislature made considerable efforts to bring honesty to our elections by implementing photo identification requirements and tightening the definition of residency.  Despite the Governor’s veto of the photo ID bill last year, the House will begin again this year to restore confidence in our elections by passing legislation to require a photo ID.  Hopefully, this video will shame the Governor into signing it.”

House Majority Leader D.J. Bettencourt “Over the four years that Democrats ruled the Legislature, they passed laws that intentionally weakened the electoral system on the general theory that the more votes the better, without regard to who is casting those votes, and whether they were even legal.  The lax attitude that they brought, plus their steadfast opposition to any requirement that we should know who is actually voting through photo ID laws, is what has resulted in an environment in which the blatant voter fraud outlined in this video can easily take place.

“However, instead of acknowledging the prospect of illegal voting that their positions have given the state, Democrats like Attorney General Mike Delaney have hid behind the reality that the people who commit voter fraud don’t come out and tell us, and that we don’t have the resources to look for fraud, so they suggest that it doesn’t happen.  Well, it’s clear today that the emperor has no clothes and that it’s time to undo the damage of the Democrat rule and put some real teeth into the integrity of our elections by passing photo ID and residency laws to ensure that this doesn’t happen again.”