Bill Gardner

New Hampshire Secretary of State Bill Gardner is taking aim at two bills backed by Democrats to rollback laws passed by Republicans in recent years.

One would eliminate new steps in the voter registration process.

Another bill aims to make it easier for transient populations, like college students and members of the military, to vote here without running afoul of other state laws.

State lawmakers are considering a bill that would bar candidates for secretary of state and treasurer from forming political committees.

The proposal is backed by the Secretary of State's office.

The new legislature will be sworn in and pick a Secretary of State on Wednesday. Bill Gardner has been Secretary of State for 42 years, and for most of that time his re-election has been inevitable.

Not this year. 

Five former New Hampshire governors  -- Republicans John Sununu, Judd Gregg, Steve Merrill Craig Benson, and Democrat John Lynch -- want lawmakers to give Secretary of State Bill Gardner another term. The ex-governors say putting Colin Van Ostern in the job would place the independence of the office and the state’s presidential primary at risk.

Former Governor John Lynch already spoke of Gardner’s behalf before the House Democratic Caucus voted 179 to 23  to back Van Ostern over Gardner.

New Hampshire House Democrats have put Secretary of State Bill Gardner — a 42-year incumbent and a longtime Democrat himself — on notice that he could be out of a job soon.

The election process has been in the limelight across the country. On Friday morning, New Hampshire's top election officials gathered to send a strong message that the state's voting systems can be trusted.

Attorney General Gordon MacDonald reiterated that despite some recent court rulings and changes this year to the voter registration process, the state is on track for a smooth election.

"New Hampshire has a long history of running elections that are fair, well-run, and a very high degree of voter participation,” MacDonald said.

 It's not out of the ordinary to see a New Hampshire politician skip across the state's southern border to raise money in Boston. What is unusual — really, unheard of until this year — is to see that from someone running for Secretary of State.

Nearly three months after President Donald Trump disbanded his controversial voter fraud commission, the public can get a peek at the voter data New Hampshire was prepared to turn over.

Dissatisfied with both the incumbent and his well-financed challenger, another Democrat is putting himself forward as an alternative to longtime Secretary of State Bill Gardner.

Former Manchester Representative and Alderman Peter Sullivan says he respects Gardner’s 42 years years of service in the position but believes it’s time to put someone more forward-thinking in the role.

It was a scene you'd expect at your average campaign launch: dozens of supporters gathered at a press conference just steps from the State House, top party officials waiting to offer endorsements and a well-endowed fundraising committee waiting behind the scenes.

An average campaign launch — except for the fact that any kind of campaign for this particular office, New Hampshire’s Secretary of State, was all but unprecedented.

Secretary of State Bill Gardner says he was "surprised" and disappointed to find out that the presidential advisory commission he was tapped to serve on last May had been abruptly dissolved. While the announcement was made Wednesday night, Gardner said he didn’t learn of the news until Thursday morning.

The Trump administration’s election commission has gone largely silent since its September meeting in Manchester. But one of its members, Maine Secretary of State Matt Dunlap, says even he is having trouble finding out basic information about the commission’s work — and he’s now filing a lawsuit seeking more transparency.

Bud Fitch is a familiar face around New Hampshire’s Statehouse and its broader political circles. He’s served as deputy attorney general, as Gov. John Lynch’s so-called "stimulus czar" and as a top staffer for former Sen. Kelly Ayotte.

Since August, Fitch has been working under Secretary of State Bill Gardner in a newly created position as a dedicated attorney focusing on election law.

Sens. Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan called on Secretary of State Bill Gardner to resign from President Trump’s voting commission, after the chair of that same commission wrote a Breitbart column casting doubt on the outcome of last November’s election results in New Hampshire.

A federal oversight agency’s review of how New Hampshire is spending $18 million in federal election money finds that the state, for the most part, follows the rules. But the back-and-forth within the audit illuminates a larger and long-running tension between the New Hampshire Secretary of State’s office and the federal elections officials.

A pair of lawsuits were filed Wednesday challenging a controversial new voting law, SB3, just weeks before the law is set to take effect.

One legal challenge comes from the New Hampshire Democratic Party. The other is filed on behalf of the League of Women Voters of New Hampshire and three individual would-be voters.

A lawsuit that sought to restrict New Hampshire's ability to share voter information with the Trump administration’s election integrity commission was resolved in court Monday. 

Both sides compromised on a plan to allow Secretary of State Bill Gardner to share scanned, unsearchable copies of local voter checklists from all wards across the state— not the larger, digitized version of that information that is collected in the central statewide voter database.

A New Hampshire lawsuit seeking to block the state from complying with a request for voter data from the Trump administration's "Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity" is back on, after a renewed request from that commission was sent out Wednesday.

Secretary of State Bill Gardner returned to New Hampshire Thursday after traveling to Washington earlier this week for his first meeting as a member of the Trump administration's election commission.

Secretary of State Bill Gardner used his opening remarks at the inaugural meeting of the Trump administration’s voting integrity commission to call for closer examination of the value of photo ID laws and other measures that, he says, improve public confidence in elections.

Update: The hearing was postponed Tuesday morning at the request of the New Hampshire ACLU, pending further legal action at the federal level.

One of the first legal challenges related to the Trump administration’s request for state voter files will go before a judge in Nashua Tuesday, as part of a lawsuit filed last week by the New Hampshire ACLU and two state lawmakers.