Former New Hampshire Secretary of State Bill Gardner capped off this year’s Amos Fortune Forum lecture series with the topic, “Will the 60th U.S. Presidential Election be the Last?” examining America’s growing distrust in its electoral process, and how New Hampshire differs from much of the country.
Gardner acknowledged the title of the talk seems outlandish – but said Americans are losing confidence in the fairness of their elections.
According to the Public Affairs Council in 2023, only 37% of Americans believe that the upcoming 2024 elections will be both “honest and open,” Gardner explained.
“That is troubling,” Gardner said, when the core of the election process is that “We are all equal when we stand in line to vote” – that whether the person in front or behind is richer, smarter or stronger, everyone’s vote counts the same. “That’s why it’s so important to be protecting that.”
While distrust of elections has in recent years been associated with Donald Trump’s campaign, as the former president has touted accusations of voter fraud and stolen elections, and while Gardner said recent elections have brought the issue “under a microscope,” he said the root cause traces back further than that.
Gardner said the modern idea of the secret ballot, cast in person – sometimes called the “Australian ballot” due to the system being popularized there — was adopted by the United States between 1889 and 1892, with every state individually adopting it. Gardner said this system solved a prevalent issue of vote-buying – which he said was a real problem at the time, with it being estimated that between 15% and 20% of votes were being bought by one or the other of the political parties.
Gardner said the system began to shift in 1993, with the National Voter Registration Act. The act sets rules for Americans to register to vote, and outlines the ways they may do so – including when they get or renew their license, at public assistance locations and by mail. But Gardner said states could be exempt from the act, if they allowed same-day voter registration at the polls. New Hampshire, North Dakota and Idaho adopted that policy.
More-recent changes in state voting policy have implemented voting by mail, and to allow unregistered voters to cast their ballots and then giving them a window of time to “cure” their ballots by registering, Gardner explained. This has made voting more complicated, as votes may be being cast early due to mail-in voting, and uncured ballots may not be counted as much as a month after the election day.
With the possibility of someone being able to both register and vote by mail now available, there are people who have the ability to vote without ever coming face-to-face with a poll worker, Gardner explained, and that has created a sense of unease.
Gardner said that these acts were aimed at making it easier and more accessible to vote, but, in practice, he said that doesn’t always play out, noting that Oregon’s voter participation rate has dropped below New Hampshire’s since implementing a mail-in voting system.
Gardner’s talk was the last in this year’s Amos Fortune Forum series. The series will return to the Jaffrey Meetinghouse next summer. Recordings of this year’s talks are available on the Amos Fortune Forum YouTube page.
Ashley Saari can be reached at 603-924-7172, Ext. 244 or asaari@ledgertranscript.com. She’s on X @AshleySaariMLT.