Politics

NH AG warns voters of anonymous mailers ahead of Tuesday’s elections

Attorney General John Formella, in a statement on Friday, said his office has received numerous complaints about the ads.

An example of one of the postcards sent anonymously. Courtesy

March 5, 2022

2 minutes to read

Days before New Hampshire voters go to the polls, state Attorney General John Formella accused three local political groups of sending anonymous advertisements to residents over the past few days.

Formella said the political ads, including postcards, mailers, and letters, do not have the identifying information of who created them as is required by state law, making it difficult for the public to easily trace who is responsible for them.

Formella, in a statement on Friday, said his office has received numerous complaints about the ads.

Given how close it is to the upcoming town elections happening across the state on Tuesday, Formella said his office wanted to make the public aware that the ads violated the law. The name and address of the candidate, people, or entity responsible for an ad must be placed at the beginning or end of an ad.

According to the attorney general’s office, the three organizations responsible for them are the New Hampshire Voter Integrity Group in the towns of Hudson and Hampton; the Tri-County Republicans in the town of New Durham; and HandCountNH.com in the town of Campton.

All three groups are considered conservative political organizations.

The New Hampshire Voter Integrity Group has been identified as one of many volunteer efforts around the country that have embraced former President Donald Trump’s false claims of massive voter fraud in the November 2020 election.

On some of the ads, provided as examples by the attorney general, only an acronym is provided as the name of the sender. A common theme found on all the examples is a call for voters to get rid of electronic voting machines in favor of hand-counting ballots, a cause embraced by conservative groups elsewhere in the country in places like Arizona, Utah, and Texas.

On what appeared to be a postcard, one ad asks Hudson voters to “VOTE YES ON QUESTION #25,” in reference to a local ballot question as to whether the town should return to counting voting ballots by hand.

One ad makes unsubstantiated claims that thousands of votes are lost to voting machines every year. Another stated, “1 New Hampshire Town — 4 Voting Machines — 10,006 Ballots counted 5 times.”

Voting has been a hot-button issue in the Granite State, especially since the last presidential election. Over the past year, New Hampshire Republicans, who control the Legislature and governor’s office, have passed two bills and introduced at least two dozen others that election observers have categorized as a threat to voting rights.

On Twitter, Emma Mintz, voter protection director of the New Hampshire Democratic Party, praised the attorney general’s action in response to the anonymous ads.

“These far-right conspiracy theorists have been trying to undermine our elections by pushing the Big Lie and trying to have our voting machines banned,” she wrote. “Now they are being investigated for violating election law.”

Examples of Non-Compliant Political Advertising by Rosemary Ford on Scribd