By PAULA TRACY, InDepthNH.org
CONCORD – Secretary of State David Scanlan said he thinks it is appropriate that he give a legislative leadership briefing on the upcoming midterm elections and election integrity and safety in the state.
It comes after Democratic leaders in the House and Senate asked him to address questions they posed in a letter to him Tuesday asking to ensure for them that elections are protected from federal overreach in the Granite State.
It comes after Republican President Donald Trump addressed the nation July 16 on the subject of election integrity, urging passage of a federal bill, the SAVE America Act, which does not currently have the support to pass.
Asked to comment July 17 on Trump’s address, Scanlan declined to address it. He has maintained that elections in New Hampshire are secure and the sole purview of each state and he has resisted efforts by Trump to seize voter information through the courts.
But as to the concerns at the state level, he said, “We’ve been working really hard to make sure that this election goes smoothly and it involves more communications on voter population, expanded training for all our election officials, which is really now just getting underway,” Scanlan said in an interview with InDepthNH.org on Wednesday morning following a press briefing in his office on pooled risk management issues.
“We are following everything that is going on at the federal level. And hopefully everyone in the state knows my position that federal involvement in the state election process…it is ours,” Scanlan said.
He noted that the cities of Manchester and Nashua did receive letters from the Federal government about sending election monitors.
Scanlan said: “Anyone is welcome to observe New Hampshire elections, including members of the Federal government.”
State Sen. Rebecca Perkins Kwoka, D-Portsmouth, who is the minority leader and House Representative Alexis Simpson, D-Exeter, her counterpart on the House side sent a letter to Scanlan requesting information on the office’s plan to ensure that the 2026 elections in New Hampshire are accessible to all eligible voters.
“The freedom to vote is the most critical pillar of our democracy. We should never turn away a single voter who is properly exercising that freedom. Voters and local election workers deserve a system that is simple and easy to use.
“In the wake of increasing federal pressure and overreach into our elections, strengthening voter rights is imperative. We deserve basic assurances from our Secretary of State that our elections will continue to be run by the Granite State, for Granite Staters. Our freedom to vote cannot be abridged to appease President Trump.”
Scanlan said he gets that.
“The specific response is that I will be communicating with them later today and it is probably appropriate that I do a legislative briefing for the legislative leadership on what our plans are,” he said.
In addition to outlining the applicable law and educational efforts underway to ensure accuracy and integrity in the elections in November, he said there has always been suspicion of how ballots are counted and there have been upgrades which the public should be aware of.
When he became Secretary of State, he said he heard of major concerns about aging voting equipment.
For the 2026 election, he said all of the ballot counting devices will have state of the art equipment, with the exception of the Town of Washington.
“Those devices will actually record an image of every single ballot that passes through them. We can pull those images up, we can look at the image, see how the machine counted it versus how the person would have counted it. We still have paper ballots to look at,” he said.
There are other measures taken and more opportunities for the public and its elected leaders to become aware of to help them feel the elections will be fair and a representation of the will of the people.