(The Center Square) — New Hampshire Republicans want Democratic Executive Council member Karen Liot Hill to resign after reports that she used her official position to solicit lawsuits targeting the state’s new voter ID law.
In a letter to Attorney General John Formella, New Hampshire Republican Party Chairman Jim MacEachern called for an investigation into Liot Hill in response to reports in the conservative NH Journal alleging she used her taxpayer-funded office to advance the interests of the Elias law firm. He accused the Lebanon Democrat of “taxpayer-funded electioneering,” citing “numerous messages” sent from her official government email account.
“Granite Staters expect their elected officials to use their positions to serve the people, not to further their political interests,” MacEachern wrote. “Liot Hill’s decision to use her official capacity to communicate on behalf of a political law firm adds to the ethical concerns that have already been generated by her previous scandals,” MacEachern wrote.
New Hampshire House Deputy Majority Leader Joe Sweeney, R-Salem, went further to call for Liot Hill’s resignation and threatened to file articles of impeachment if she refused to step down.
“Published emails show Executive Councilor Karen Liot Hill used her official office to help a partisan, Washington, D.C., law firm recruit plaintiffs to sue New Hampshire over our voter ID and absentee safeguards,” Sweeney said. “That’s not public service; that’s political lawfare run out of a taxpayer-funded inbox,”
Under the state Constitution, executive councilors can be impeached by the House and tried by the Senate for “corruption, malpractice, or maladministration,” he noted.
“What we’ve seen, leveraging an official position to aid outside litigants against our state, squarely raises maladministration and malpractice in office,” Sweeney said. “I will not look the other way.”
But Liot Hill called the allegations by the Republicans “frivolous” and accused them of an “assault on our democracy” and “attacking voting rights” by pushing through a plan to require our voter ID to cast ballots.
“My job as an elected official is to advocate for my constituents, which is exactly what l do every day,” she said in a statement. “Republicans are now attacking me for fighting for the rights of my constituents to vote. This is an attempt to distract from their failure to lower the cost of housing, healthcare, education, and property taxes for the people of New Hampshire.”
New Hampshire Democratic Party chairman Ray Buckley dismissed the claims as “manufactured outrage” that is “wasting taxpayer dollars” in a social media post. He said it’s “not unethical for an elected official to stand up against an unethical scheme to block legal voters from voting.”
The issue of voting security and integrity has been thorny in New Hampshire in recent years, with Democrats and Republicans fighting over proposed election reforms and discredited claims of voter fraud.
New Hampshire Republicans, who took control of the state Legislature in the 2020 elections, have pushed through several legislative proposals that voting rights groups say are aimed at suppressing votes. Those include proposals to restrict student voting and tighten voter ID requirements, while blocking attempts by Democrats to expand early voting and mail balloting.
