Also on today’s menu:
Greenland Considers Voting Machine Ban
From Our Readers: Reforming Solid Waste Rules
New Hampshire State Police Lieutenant Michael Kokoski says an investigation into threats against the town of Troy after Police Chief David Ellis attended the Jan. 6 Trump rally in Washington, D.C., found no crimes had been committed.
Kokoski said he was called to investigate the emails and voicemail messages, rather than having Ellis conduct the investigation. “[G]iven that the town/PD appeared to be the subject of the ‘threats,’ and given that the impetus for all the messages in questions was the Chief’s presence in D.C., it seemed a conflict of interest to have Troy PD handle the inquiry, thus the Chief asked us to review the material,” Kokosi wrote in an email.
Some of the threatening emails and calls to the police department and town offices were obscene, but none of them were criminal, Kokoski concluded. One email was full of foul language, but no explicit threats; and an unidentified man from Barnstead wrote, “We hang people in the United States for treason.”
Ellis attended the rally led by then-President Donald Trump, but did not take part in the subsequent riot at the United State Capitol building. He later called out the mob violence seeking to prevent Congress from ratifying the 2020 election results.
Greenland Considers Voting Machine Ban
Residents of the town of Greenland will decide during a special election on Saturday whether to ban the use of voting machines in local, state, and federal elections, returning to counting ballots by hand. The special election follows a citizen petition filed earlier this year.
“I believe there is merit to consider banning the machines we use, solely in the interest of caution,” said lead petitioner Douglas Wilson. “I have full confidence in the town of Greenland and the poll watchers. ... When it comes to the machines, I don’t know.”
Interest in banning the machines grew following an audit of a legislative race in Windham after a losing candidate asked for a recount which showed that Republican candidates got hundreds more votes than were originally counted. The audit showed the cause of the discrepancy was not the AccuVote machine, but a separate letter-folding machine used for absentee ballots that creased the ballots through vote bubbles in the legislative race, causing miscalculations when they were fed into the voting machines.
Similar attempts to ban voting machines are under way in Hampton and Kensington, and a bill calling for a statewide ban was filed in the Legislature, Seacoastonline.com reported. Franklin’s long-time ballot clerk, the late June Dolloff, had always argued against ballot machines which she said are never as accurate as hand counts, and the Three Rivers City delayed the deployment of ballot machines for years after other communities had accepted them.
From Our Readers: Reforming Solid Waste Rules
Thanks very much for your excellent reporting on the Pemi Baker meeting and also the withdrawal of the Casella Wetlands Application.
I work with North Country Alliance for Balanced Change (NCABC) and we are heartened to see coverage and interest in the trash management issue broadening statewide, believing mindful, forward-thinking reform is a north-to-south responsibility and a necessity. The threats looming for our environment, public and community health, tourism and the economy are unmistakable and a vast, unneeded new landfill on green fields will lock us in for generations of regrettable decisions.
One note for future reference, a correction regarding the close of the PB article. I am actually from Whitefield, not Carroll, and I was referring to Whitefield in my quoted remark.
Like Whitefield, Carroll will be impacted by ALL of Casella’s projected 102 trash hauling trucks and an estimated 8 leachate tankers—x 2!—all making round trips daily. Whitefield has a perilous, acute intersection alongside the Johns River where incoming trucks will negotiate a 90 degree turn from Rt. 3 and up the steep hill of Rt. 116 heading to the landfill. Because of that hill, a tractor trailer driver, coming from Rt. 116 to Rt. 3, lost his life plunging into the Johns on an icy winter morning a few years ago. That intersection is at the center of our town.
Three years into this struggle, we have a lot of information to share!
Again, warm thanks for bringing these stories to the public, legislators and regulators, and highlighting public opinion and insights back to the corporate players as well.
Sarah Doucette
Whitefield
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