Secretary of State Bill Gardner has been saying for several weeks now that he intends to release new information about potential voter fraud later this spring, when his comprehensive review of registration and voting lists, using the Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck System, is completed.
Gardner told New Hampshire Primary Source this week that expects his report will provide an estimate of the number of duplicate voters during the 2016 election – that is, people who voted in New Hampshire and also voted in another state or states.
The Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck Program was created in 2005 by former Kansas Secretary of State Ron Thornburg and election officials in other states. In recent years, it has been administered by the current controversial Kansas secretary of state, Kris Kobach, ostensibly to track down voter fraud. But it has been criticized by researcherscharging that the system produces a huge number of false positives and as such is unreliable.
In 2014, Kobach said that the system was capable of checking the registration records of more than 100 million people.
Gardner said he waited many years before he felt confident enough to recommend that New Hampshire enter the program. But he said this week that he has still reached no definite conclusion about its reliability.