Decision 2022: We await the verdict

Yes folks, our guv certainly has a Big Decision weighing on him. No, it’s not whether he’s gonna spring for a pair of those brand-new Maverick or Maven skis coming out for the 2022 season, but whether he’s gonna take the leap and run against Maggie Hassan for that US Senate seat she’s been holding on to since 2016.

But politics is kinda funny, so we now find ourselves in the position of finding out what the guv actually meant in June 2019 when, asked about running for the Senate, he said: “I have absolutely no interest. I’m a manager. I love to manage.”

So let’s try to piece this out together:

• There’s the pressure from the national GOP — not to mention the staties — which is getting pretty intense, with all sorts of bigwigs (headed by the No. 1 Senate GOPer Mitch McConnell) pulling out all the stops to get him to run. He’s a shoo-in, they figure. Hard to resist, no?

• Then there’s the pressure from the national media, which, during its never-ending campaign, is always looking for a storyline. And this time they’ve landed on NH’s Senate race because — well, because it’s our turn, that’s why. And no less than Crystal Ball Gazer Larry Sabato, down in Virginny, says so. Not as hard to resist.

• But, of course, there’s the fam. It’s not clear at all whether the guv’s wife Valerie is thrilled about the idea of her hubby headed off to DC, especially if it means going down there with him. It’s not too hard to imagine her having already had a coupla heart-to-hearts with sis-in-law Kitty about her hubby John E’s years in DC. Let’s call this one the wild card.

Windham’s unfolding mystery

Notwithstanding that there actually is a need for NH to update its election laws — heaven forbid! — let’s attempt to figure out what will happen now that the three-week (yes 3 weeks) audit of a single state rep race in Windham.

On election night, the results showed that GOPer Julius Sosti edged out Dem Kristi St. Laurent, so, of course there was a recount — a recount that showed that Sosti’s margin was actually 420 votes.

The recount, of course, triggered an Orange Alert down in Mar-a-Lago, where a simmering ex-prez looking to start a fight with anyone getting in his irrationally suspicious way lasered in on the little ol’ southern NH town’s state rep election as a sign of MASSIVE VOTER FRAUD that somehow was linked to the EVEN MORE MASSIVE VOTER FRAUD he still clings to as justification for his unjustifiable accusations about 2020.

So, what happened? Let’s see if you were paying attention:

A. A gerbil got into the vote-counting machines and manipulated the results to show a Dem victory.

B. The machines’ control mechanisms were actually located in NH Dem Party headquarters, where Ray Buckley — faced with a mounting loss of the Legislature that evening — decided to try to fix just this one to ease his pain.

C. Republicans, at the behest of Fox News, Newsmax, One America Network and Mar-a-Lago, set up the whole scenario as part of the neverending MASSIVE ELECTION FRAUD campaign.

D. The AccuVote machines misread folded absentee ballots as “overvotes” and didn’t count them — something many state and local election officials had already been made aware of since at least summer.

Yes, folks, as we’ve all found out, you’ve got to know when to hold ‘em and know when to fold ‘em.

‘Crease’ and desist

One more thing about Windham — promise. It turns out that, officials knew at least last summer (several moons before the election, BTW) when a state committee looking at voting procedures during the pandemic were warned by local election officials of the precise problem that ended up causing the Windham brouhaha. As NHPR’s Casey McDermott reported, the committee’s minutes point out that “creases can cause shadowing and result in misreading/rejection.”

Creases, aka folds. So the committee explored this further and was eventually told by the office of the SOS that to address the problem with folded absentee ballots, “it’s important to try to flatten them out as much as possible so they’re smoothly processed by the machine.”

MAKING THE ROUNDS

As you might have expected, no word from Mar-a-Lago acknowledging the Windham ELECTION NON-FRAUD. At least a “thank you for the recount” would have been nice.

Every two years, this question arises: Why do they pretend to call the Manch. mayoral election “nonpartisan”?

In case you missed her interview on WMUR, Annie Kuster recalls her harrowing experience on 1/6 in the Capitol, with the revelation that she was treated for PTSD after the insurrection. Makes you realize it’s gonna be pretty hard to run as a 1/6 denier against her or any other member of Congress in 2022.

Don’t at least a few members of the Legis. have a conflict of interest when they vote on a ban on publishing postarrest mug shots?