​
​The NH Community Rights Network is glad to support ANCER's gathering to educate Great Bay towns regarding the resident-proposed Newmarket Freedom From Chemical Trespass RBO. Join us to learn how NH residents are using local democracy to manifest the visions they have for economic, social, and environmental justice.

WHEN
Tuesday June 26th
6:00pm to 8:00pm (extended hours courtesy of library)
WHERE
Newmarket Public Library
1 Elm Street, Newmarket, NH 03857

FREE
Donations gladly accepted to support ANCER's outreach costs.
Contact [email protected] or send cash or check to ANCER member Glen Traquair, 156A Exeter Road, Newmarket NH, 03857.

RBO Effort for the Great Bay
ANCER's purpose is to educate and organize towns in the area of the Great Bay Estuary regarding their rights in the face of laws that allow unsustainable projects to go forward in our communities. Currently, Durham, Newington, and Newmarket residents are facing effects of Eversource's Seacoast Reliability Project dredging and/or drilling an energy corridor through the Great Bay Estuary's Little Bay, with the potential to stir up 100 year old toxins embedded in the silt. In response, Newmarket residents are organizing around their right to democratically adopt a Newmarket Freedom from Chemical Trespass Rights-Based Ordinance based on their inalienable right and the right of nature to protect their health, safety, and well-being. ANCER hopes that fellow Great Bay area residents--once empowered to raise their voices to declare what kind of social and environmental justice they stand behind--will choose to adopt community rights-based ordinances to elevate their and their ecosystems' rights above the claimed 'rights' of corporations.

What will you learn?

• Who ANCER is and why they joined together
• Why Great Bay towns must proactively protect their water
• What an RBO is and how it would do this
• What you can do to help at both the local and state level

Presenters:
ANCER's co-founders
Michelle Sanborn, NHCRN President & CELDF NH Organizer

Join Us!
FB: https://www.facebook.com/events/2088445108101217/
Hosted by: ANCER
Contact: [email protected]
Visit NHCRN's website & follow us on Facebook!​

​Last month, members of Alliance for Newmarket Citizen & Ecosystem Rights (ANCER) made public comment to Newmarket's Town Council on the resident-proposed community 
​rights-based ordinance (RBO).
The Newmarket Freedom From Chemical Trespass RBO, a.k.a. "A Rights-Based Ordinance for the Great Bay", would extend protections for Newmarket’s people and natural environments beyond those protections currently in place at the state and federal level. It would make it illegal for corporations to contaminate Newmarket’s watershed, including into the Great Bay Estuary, which would include Eversource’s Seacoast Reliability project crossing through Little Bay. 

ANCER is also hosting a Tuesday, June 26th, 6-8pm (NOTE: library is making this space available after hours) public informational event at Newmarket's library to inform fellow Newmarket residents about how little local democratic freedom the town's residents actually have to cast votes in order to make decisions about their vision for the safety and well-being of themselves and their surrounding ecosystems--and to discuss what they can do about this.
​
ANCER members' first hand experience of the suppression of local democracy has inspired their continued support of the NH Community Rights Amendment to recognize the need to empower people in their communities with the authority to enact local, common sense laws to protect their economic, social, and environmental well-being from corporate harm.

Round Table Discussions for
Town Moderators

REACH OUT TO YOUR TOWN MODERATOR ASKING THEM TO COMMIT TO PROTECT THE PEOPLE'S VOTES BY SUPPORTING VERIFICATION HAND COUNTS OF ELECTRONIC DEVICE-COUNTED BALLOTS. 

This legislative session, NHCRN helped educate legislators on HB1582, the Trust But Verify bill, which would have provided an opportunity for moderators to assure both themselves and voters of the accuracy of their town's electronic ballot counts. HB1582 proposed to clarify moderators' authority to randomly and openly conduct a verification count of electronic ballot-counting devices--after polls close, but prior to attesting to the accuracy of the vote--thereby giving them a method to comply with the duties they take an oath to uphold in both Part 2, Art. 32 of NH's Constitution and in state law.

The NH Secretary of State opposed this measure saying it would lead to a lack of confidence in the voting systems used in the Granite State. 

This is your opportunity to educate your town Moderator with the TRUST BUT VERIFY FAQ

The Secretary of State is now requesting input on our elections. He has set up a number of Round Table discussions for Town Moderators. 

One of the questions proposed for discussion is: 
"We would like to hear your viewpoint on attempts to require hand counts of certain races on the ballot after the polls close on election night. Do you feel there is a need for such a check on these machines?"

Conctact your Town Moderators, educate them on why a verification hand count is needed, and ask them to speak out for it at their Round Table. Educate your town Moderator with the TRUST BUT VERIFY FAQ.

ROUND TABLES WILL BE HELD ON

• Wed June 20 in Gorham Town Hall at 10 a.m.
• Wed. June 20 at 2:30 p.m. in Plymouth Town Hall
• Thurs June 21 at 2 pm in Keene, Blastos Community Room, Police Dept.
• Thurs June 21 at 7 p.m. NH Archives in Concord
• Friday June 22 at 10 a.m in Brentwood, Parks and Rec building​​

​​​
FROM ONE MODERATOR TO ANOTHER...

I am the Town Moderator of Derry.  I’m writing to give you some background on a question posed by the Secretary of State in an email to Moderators dated June 1.  The Secretary asked for our viewpoint on requiring hand counts of certain races on the ballot after the polls close on election night.  I believe he is referring to HB 1582.  This bill allowed but did NOT require moderators to verify the machine count after an election.  If the moderator decided to do so, the bill outlined a process for doing so.  Please read the full bill for further background.

I am very concerned that the Accu-vote program we use, in fact, any software can be hacked by a determined and patient hacker.  I am not alone in this conclusion.  Over 100 cybersecurity and computer programming experts have testified to the vulnerability of these ballot counting devices to malfunction or tampering  even when the voting machine is physically disconnected from the internet.  Earlier this year, the U.S. Congress allocated millions of dollars to be distributed among the states to upgrade to a paper ballot system AND to develop a means of auditing the elections results.  

But HB 1582 was not designed to require a post-election audit.  It’s primary purpose was to restore to moderators the authority which I believe is plainly stated in statute to verify the accuracy of the count.  Doing selected hand counts has been used by several moderators over the years when they wanted a check on the machine results.  Until September 2016, the Election Procedures Manual (EPM) stated: “Moderators may use their discretion as to whether or not they will conduct such a (verification) count on election night.” (pg 40 2014-2015 EPM).  This sentence was removed without any explanation in the 2016-17 EPM distributed in October, 2016.

Whether you trust the machine count or not, I hope you will support the right of town moderators, at their discretion, to verify the machine count before certifying the final results.  In the final analysis, this is a local control issue.  Over the past several years, the SoS has been chipping away at the authority moderators to conduct elections in their own district.  This is just one more chip.   If for any reason you were not sure of a vote results, wouldn’t you like the authority to publicly recount the votes without having to get permission from the SoS?

Please join me in asking the Secretary to restore the instructions allowing moderators, at their own discretion, to assure both themselves and voters of the accuracy of their town's electronic ballot counts.

By the way, in September, 2016, I conducted a verification count similar to the one described in HB 1582.  I brought in 4 fresh teams of counters and completed the task in less than one hour, using ballots from one of the 6 machines we use in Derry.  Of course, I was roundly reprimanded by the Secretary for doing so.

Mary Till, former NH State Representative & current Moderator for Derry, NH

It's time to stand up for voting audits, by Gerhard Bedding

www.fosters.com/news/20180621/to-editor-elections-and-community-rights

Posted Jun 21, 2018 at 8:36 AMUpdated Jun 21, 2018 at 8:36 AM
  To the Editor:
How many people are paying attention to the 2018 elections? This November could be a turning point for our state, nation, and planet, so voters better get involved!
We need to elect new State Representatives who work for our communities and our rights! Over 100 Legislators voted this spring for CACR 19, the Community Rights Amendment, to give our towns the right to pass ordinances that protect our citizens and environment from unwanted, dangerous, and destructive development. Unfortunately many more opposed CACR 19 in order to protect greed-driven special interests that hurt our towns.
There will be Congressional elections as well as an election for governor, and you know that corporate PACs (political action committees) will bribe our candidates with legal (but immoral) campaign contributions. If they take PAC bribes, then we should vote them out. We have the best politicians money can buy, but We the People can change that!
All politics are local, so we need to get organized town by town and in our cities. You may contact the NH Community Rights Network (nhcommunityrights.org) to get assistance with local efforts that protect the health, safety, and welfare of people and nature.
Please do your civic duty and support candidates who put our towns and cities and Nation ahead of greedy special interests; do it for our Country, do if for our children, do it for Mother Nature and planet Earth!
Peter A. White, NH Community Rights Network Board Member, Nottingham

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NHCRN Quarterly Update
A Publication of the New Hampshire Community Rights Network
Educating and empowering communities and elected officials about our individual and collective right of local self-governance in order to secure and protect the inherent and unalienable rights of all inhabitants of New Hampshire to economic, social and environmental justice, including the rights of nature.

Volume 4 / Issue 2
June 2018
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HELP PROTECT RIGHTS OF PEOPLE & NATURE
Your DONATION serves to protect New Hampshire's human and natural communities from social, economic, and environmental injustice.

Consider becoming a sustaining NHCRN supporter today. Your monthly donation will ensure the vitality and growth of NH's Community Rights and Rights of Nature movement.

NHCRN is a 501c3 grassroots non-profit dependent upon private donations and small grants from regional funders. If you feel NHCRN does not empower your community in a manner that inspires you to give, please reach out and share with us how we can do so. 
Email [email protected] with your suggestions.

REMARKABLE ADVANCEMENT OF NH COMMUNITY RIGHTS STATE CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT
A landmark legislative session was held this winter in NH. It marked the first time a Community Rights state constitutional amendment was debated and voted on by a state House of Representatives. The proposed amendment would recognize the authority of people in towns throughout the state to enact local rights-based laws protecting individual and communities’ rights, free from corporate interference and state preemption. That authority includes the right to protect the natural environment.

Bi-partisan Support
Nine bi-partisan sponsors championed CACR19, known as the NH Community Rights Amendment. It is the first  Community  Rights  amendment  in  the  nation to receive support from a legislative subcommittee with a recommendation of “ought-to-pass.”
The amendment did not receive the 3/5 super-majority vote required to advance a state constitutional amendment to the November ballot. This was not surprising, given that the full committee chair ignored the subcommittee recommendation’s “ought-to-pass.” He allowed a motion of “inexpedient-to-legislate” to stand  and  move to the House floor.
 
Despite this, 1/3 of the New Hampshire House of Representatives demonstrated their support. These legislators recognize the inalienable right of people in their communities to protect themselves from corporations intent on using their communities as sacrifice zones. Community Rights supporters are encouraged both by the  bipartisan support the people’s amendment received in the sub- committee, and the 112 House votes in favor of advancing the amendment to voters.
 
Why Community Rights?
Growing numbers of New Hampshire communities are forced to host parasitic special interest projects such as high voltage transmission lines, oil and gas infrastructure, water withdrawals for resale, landfills, and other harms. They face a structure of law and government that allows corporations to impose these harmful activities into their communities against the will of the people due to corporate claimed “rights” and privileges.
 
In response, New Hampshire communities are partnering with the NH Community Rights Network (NHCRN) and Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund to advance their rights. They are drafting local Community Rights  laws, or rights-based ordinances (RBOs). The RBOs elevate communities’ right of local community self-government and environmental rights to clean air, water, and soil, above corporate claimed “rights” and state preemption.

Over the past decade nearly a dozen communities state-wide have adopted RBOs —not  because  they  expected the New Hampshire legislature to agree  with  them, but because these rights are inherent and inalienable. The NH Community Rights Amendment would guarantee state protection for local RBOs.
 
What it Takes
We know from prior people’s movements that fundamental change takes persistent, unrelenting pressure. As corporate threats grow in the Granite State, more communities are joining the Community Rights movement. These communities and their supporters will reintroduce  the  NH Community Rights Amendment because our quality of life — indeed our very lives and those of our children and future generations — depends on it.

GRASSROOTS RBO ACTION
Members of Alliance for Newmarket Citizen & Ecosystem Rights (ANCER) made public comment to Newmarket's Town Council on the resident-proposed communityrights-based ordinance (RBO). The Newmarket Freedom From Chemical Trespass RBO, a.k.a. "A Rights-Based Ordinance for the Great Bay", would extend protections for Newmarket’s people and natural environments beyond those protections currently in place at the state and federal level. It would make it illegal for corporations to contaminate Newmarket’s watershed, including into the Great Bay Estuary, which would include Eversource’s Seacoast Reliability project crossing through Little Bay.
 
ANCER also has plans to host a Tuesday, June 26th, 6-8pm public informational event at Newmarket's library to inform fellow Newmarket residents about how little local democratic freedom the town's residents actually have to cast votes in order to make decisions about their vision for the safety and well-being of themselves and their surrounding ecosystems--and to discuss what they can do about this.
 
ANCER members' first hand experience of the suppression of local democracy has inspired their continued support of the NH Community Rights Amendment to recognize the need to empower people in their communities with the authority to enact local, common sense laws to protect their economic, social, and environmental well-being from corporate harm.

Bring a NHCRN Fundraiser to Your Community!
NH folk trio Oak & Ivy recognizes that forwarding the community rights movement at both the local and state level requires funding. In light of this, they have extended an open invitatiion to NH communities to partner with them to put on shows to benefitNHCRN's work educating elected officials and communities about the right of local community self-government. If you'd like to bring an event like this to your town, please email [email protected] to find out how a NHCRN fundraiser show can be customized to fit your community's vision.

Stay Connected — Join NHCRN on Facebook!

VERIFY THE VOTE COUNT IN NH
PLEASE REACH OUT TO YOUR
TOWN MODERATOR ASKING
THEM TO COMMIT TO PROTECT
THE PEOPLE'S VOTES BY
SUPPORTING VERIFICATION
HAND COUNTS OF ELECTRONIC
DEVICE-COUNTED BALLOTS. 

This legislative session, NHCRN helped educate legislators on HB1582, theTrust But Verify bill, which would have enabled town Moderators to assure both themselves and voters of the accuracy of their town's electronic ballot counts. HB1582 proposed to do this by clarifying Moderators' authority to randomly and openly conduct a verification count of electronic ballot-counting devices after polls close but prior to attesting to the accuracy of the vote--thereby giving them a method to comply with the duties they take an oath to uphold in both Part 2, Article 32 of NH's Constitution and in state law.

The NH Secretary of State opposed HB1582 saying it would lead to a lack of confidence in the voting systems used in the Granite State. He is now requesting input on our elections and has set up round table discussions for your town Moderator, including the following question:

We would like to hear your viewpoint on attempts to require hand counts of certain races on the ballot after the polls close on election night. Do you feel there is a need for such a check on these machines?

This is your opportunity to educate
your town Moderator with the 
TRUST BUT VERIFY FAQ

Along with educating your Moderator on why a verification hand count is needed, please also ask them to speak out for it at their round table:
Wed. June 20, Gorham Town Hall, 10am
Wed. June 20, Plymouth Town Hall, 2:30pm
Thurs. June 21, Keene Police Dept. Blastos Comm. Rm, 2pm
Thurs. June 21, Concord's NH Archives, 7pm
Fri. June 22, Brentwood Parks and Rec, 10am

GRANITE BRIDGE PIPELINE PROJECT
Liberty Utilities' proposed Granite Bridgepipeline project will be a 27 mile, 16-diameter, high pressure natural gas pipeline spanning state land along Route 101 between Manchester and Stratham. Its currently proposed route will run within 100s of feet of local water sources and could include crossing the Lamprey River twice in Raymond. Liberty Utilities also chose Epping to host a 200 billion cubic foot (160 feet high, 200 feet wide) liquified natural gas storage tank and a plant for reliquification and regasification to move from pipe to distribution.

GOVERNOR TO SIGN PREEMPTION BILL HB1233
This May, the NH Senate passed HB1233. When signed into law, it will give the state full preemptive control over which seeds and fertilizers are allowed in NH. NHCRN educates our elected officials about our inherent and inalienable right to local self-determination. HB1233 violates this right and interferes with the people's collective authority to adopt ordinances concerning seeds and fertilizers that pose a threat to the health, safety, and welfare of NH's human and natural ecosystems. HB1233 supporters argue farmers need it to prevent patchwork laws interfering with farming from town to town. HB1233 opposition argues NH farmers and towns already work together well without issue, i.e. HB1233 is a problem in need of local democratic solutions.
What could possibly be the silver lining in this preemption law coming to the Granite State? Especially considering we will be the 30th state in the nation to have such a law passed via the calculated agenda of big biotech companies and their shareholders, which include fossil fuel moguls? The silver lining is this.

With every push against community rights, communities have reason to push back. NHCRN sees the Governor signing this bill as a call of action to NH communities to adopt local anti-GMO seed and anti-sludge rights-based ordinances--anyway. 

It is also a reminder call for NH communities to support the NH Community Rights Amendment because, with legislation like HB1233 blocking local democracy, our state officials and government have fallen short of protecting NH people and our communities and ecosystems.

HOST A DEMOCRACY SCHOOL
Democracy School explores the limits of conventional regulatory organizing and offers a new organizing model that helps citizens confront the usurpation by corporations of the rights of communities, people, and earth. Lectures cover the history of people’s movements and corporate power, and the dramatic organizing over the last decade in Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Ohio, Colorado, Washington, and Oregon by communities confronting agribusiness, the oil and gas industry, corporate hegemony over worker rights, and others. Included with enrollment in the Democracy School is a 300 plus-page book of background reading material.

 YouTube CHANNEL
Community Rights Organizing Webinar: Liberate Yourself from the Activist Hamster Wheel  Only when we realize we are spinning in a fixed system can we begin to create new organizating strategies to work for what communities want, instead of compromising for what we don’t want.

ADDITIONAL MEDIA OF INTEREST . . .
What's Up Eastie? -- Community Rights  NHCRN President Michelle Sanborn and long-term East Boston community leader Mary Ellen Welch are interviewed about Community Rights by Kannan Thiruvengadam—an urban farmer, ecology enthusiast, community organizer, sustainability educator, climate resiliency consultant. community activist, and host of this Zumix radio show on current issues.

Resistance Radio Derrick Jensen interviews CELDF’s Thomas Linzey on the legal structures that block us from protecting our communities and creating sustainability, why we keep participating in those structures, and what some communities are doing differently.

Tell Me a Story: Michelle Holman, Activist  Community Rights Lane County founder Michelle Holman talks to the Register-Guard about the importance of fighting for the health, safety, and welfare of Lane County residents.

When Human Rights Are Not Enough: Defending the Rights of Nature Human rights to a healthy environment are gaining recognition—and today, the rights of nature are growing as well. Here, CELDF’s Mari Margil speaks to how recognizing ecosystem rights is central to tackling environmental degradation.

NEWS FROM OUR PARTNERS, AFFILIATES, & OTHERS
Blog: The Gun Establishment's Weapon of Choice (Preemption) State involvement in the enforcement of preemption laws used to be a rare occurrence. What hasn’t been rare, unfortunately, is state legislators using preemption laws to shield large economic actors from municipal lawmaking. This gives private corporations an additional tool to sue municipal governments who “interfere” with the corporation’s activities.

PGE Continues to Try to Bankrupt Grant Township We have done our research. We know of the dangers posed by fracking and fracking waste. We know that PGE has an awful record of environmental violations. We do not understand how we are the ones that could be punished when we are protecting our civil right to clean air, water, and soil.

Restructuring Ohio State Government Ohioans have firsthand experience of the truth that the very legal and governing structures that we live under—regardless of the individuals in their corporate and government positions—are preventing us from governing ourselves and protecting our communities.

Colorado Sits at Center of the Rights of Nature Debate Colorado environmentalists are gaining ground—and water—in their efforts to secure humanlike rights for nature.

National & State Preemption News Welcome to the Preemption Watch News. We hope you find these links, excerpts, and summaries useful. You can find more information about preemption by using our preemption map, tools, and research

Informed Public Threatens Those in Power, But Our Public No Threat  It is at our own peril that we do not understand why what’s happening in our country is happening. Nor do we understand how our system of government and law not only allows the why, but supports it. When we understand the “why,” we are a dangerous public to those in power. Not knowing the “why” makes us easier to control.

Our Laws Make Slaves of Nature; It's Not Just Humans Who Need Rights Environmental laws regulate the human use and destruction of nature. They legalize fracking, drilling, and even dynamiting the tops off mountains to mine coal. The consequences are proving catastrophic: the die-off crisis of the world's coral reefs, accelerating species extinction, climate change. Finally, though, this is changing.

A Phoenix From the Ashes: Resurrecting a Constitutional Right of Local, Community Self-Government in the Name of Environmental Sustainability This article began as a series of legal briefs filed in various federal courts in defense of several municipal communities who had asserted their local legislative authority to prohibit a variety of harmful corporate projects.

Voters Want Local Control, Not State Takeovers Pushing back against preemption is not just a matter of winning elections. People who feel disenfranchised by what they see as a corrupt, centralized power structure aren’t looking for the next elected official to save the day. They want to save their own day.

How American Corporations Had a 'Hidden' Civil Rights MovementLaw professor Adam Winkler says that in the past 200 years, businesses have gone to court claiming constitutional rights that were originally intended for people. His new book is We the Corporations.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT
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Consider becoming a sustaining NHCRN supporter today. Your monthly donation will ensure the vitality and growth of NH's Community Rights and Rights of Nature movement.

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www.sentinelsource.com/opinion/letters_to_the_editor/it-s-time-to-stand-up-for-voting-audits-by/article_10955e94-a9bc-5138-b6db-22dd4407db4a.html

It’s time for the city of Keene and The Keene Sentinel to show vision and leadership on the issue of voting system accountability.
I am urging them to make clear to the secretary of state that the city of Keene stands ready to do random audits (verification counts) of computer vote totals.
A citizen petition of 2015, a City Council meeting (September 2015) and several Sentinel editorials show clear public support for auditing of computer vote totals on election night to enhance election integrity.
This is not a new idea: Such audits were recommended by the N.H. Electronic Ballot Counting Device Advisory Committee on Nov. 30, 2009. Laws in 30 states and the District of Columbia — covering about 85 percent of the U.S. population — mandate some form of auditing. New Hampshire is not one of them.
But individual moderators could audit if they chose to do so — Danville and Brookline have done it for many years. In fact, New Hampshire’s Election Procedures Manual stated, year after year: “Moderators may use their discretion as to whether or not they will conduct such a (verification) count on election night.”
This sentence was removed, without any explanation, in the 2016-17 edition, published October 2016, one month after Mary Till, Derry’s moderator, did a random audit of one machine. The secretary of state reprimanded this highly professional moderator for doing so. High-handed? I think so.
Not only is it time to reestablish individual moderators’ rights to do verification counts, it’s time for the city of Keene to question what it was told by the secretary of state: that it was not “statutorily allowed” to do such audits.
In a meeting with me on Dec. 1, 2015, Keene’s city clerk, Patricia Little, stated that, if instructed to audit, she had a clear idea of how she would organize it so that it would not be an additional burden on a team that had worked a long, hard day. Ms. Little also said that, if asked, she would speak in favor of random verification counts.
I expect she will have a chance to do so at a meeting of moderators called by the secretary of state on June 21, at 2 p.m., at the Blastos Room at the Keene police station. I believe this meeting should also be open to the public. I plan to attend and encourage other interested citizens to do the same.
GERHARD BEDDING
Keene, NH