HB1163

Honorable members of the Election Law Committee I request you support HB1163. The purpose of the bill is to add rigor to election process that does not exist today while maintaining the ability of the Secretary of State to administer the election law procedures with flexibility. We are requesting that the Secretary of State who has much leeway to design process and practices within the boundaries of the RSAs add a layer of control in how he executes the processes. Today the control to design and execute many of the areas of election law are at the discretion of the SoS however they are lacking standard controls. We are requesting that processes would be documented, rev controlled and approved for the public to see. If documents used in the execution of the election procedures change, that documents are revision controlled and approvals of changes are documents for the public to see. This issue and the serious nature of it came to light this past year at a recount. There were concerns raised during a recount about the condition of some of the ballot boxes brought into the recount. The chain of custody paperwork was pulled for review. It was discovered in that review, that the forms that had been used for decades to move ballot boxes had been altered to remove time stamps from the sending town and receipt at the archive building. This critical information had been on the forms to provide visibility into how long it took to transport ballots from the town to the point of receipt to ensure there was not manipulation during transit. Upon query via 91A it was nearly impossible to discover when, how and who authorized this change that weakened the chain of custody documents. It brought to light the greater issue of document control and approval. We respectfully request that we institute process and document standards commonly used in the business world and make this information available to the public. Thank you, Brenda Towne