Plotting & Rigging of New Hampshire's Disaffiliation

A recording obtained by LNC News captures a faction's floor strategy from the 2026 national convention. The discussion is about controlling who ends up on the incoming National Committee and Judicial Committee, with the goal of securing the votes needed to disaffiliate the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire.

One speaker notes that disaffiliating New Hampshire "takes three quarters of the entire LNC," counts the regions their side already controls, and reasons that if their opponents will pick up "two out of five of these" seats, "we do not have the votes to disaffiliate New Hampshire." The stated goal is to make sure "their guys don't get a majority" while their own slate does.

For seats their side expects to win outright, their instruction was to force a full approval vote and resist any move to speed things along. "Do not try to cut corners and say we're going to get this done quickly," one speaker says, predicting that on a single vote "these five red people, they will win" while "our green people will be the ones dropping off." The concern is that the other side will "frame it as, let's just save time and take the top five," and the counter is to "frame it as do it right."

The recording also describes using the opposite outcome as a weapon: "If no one gets elected, the LNC fills vacancies," and an LNC of "officers plus regionals" friendly to their side "will pick our guys." "If we elect nobody tomorrow on anything," then "the LNC people point to everything, so just don't do anything." In other words, win the seats outright where the votes are there, and where they aren't, elect no one, regardless of the will of the delegates, so the LNC appoints instead. They ended up using procedural misconduct to prevent the minority voices from being represented by the delegates. Once they had calculated the probabilities, their plans were to stop the elections from being held.

Notably, the recording also references a well-regarded parliamentarian advising their side privately. "John" they say is being paid for by "people in this room," described as helping "every good guy."

The speaker describing the paid parliamentarian appears to be Kyle Davis, the same party member whom a forensic investigation identified as having exported the party's membership data, which he contests. His presence at the center of this strategy is its own red flag. See our prior coverage: Historical Preservation Committee Seats Member Named in Data Breach Investigation.

A successful scheme

On May 25, the newly seated LNC voted to revoke LPNH's affiliate status, 15-2-1. The session lasted under thirty minutes. LPNH did not receive advance notice or a hearing before the vote, and formal written notice did not reach the affiliate until June 4. An attempt by some members to stand up an investigatory committee first did not carry.

The bylaws set the Judicial Committee's quorum at five of its seven seats. Ken Moellman and Avens O'Brien were both elected by majority vote on the first count. A motion to seat the next five highest vote-getters was then voted down and convention chair Steven Nekhaila ruled there would be no further rounds of balloting. Points of order were raised and gavelled over. Delegates appealed the ruling, and the appeal failed amid a convention schedule that was rushed and disorganized. The result was a Judicial Committee three members short of quorum with five seats still empty.

Filling the seats

The Judicial Committee filled the seats itself. Two people, elected in a process that never reached the committee's own quorum requirement, chose the five colleagues who would sit with them on the panel deciding New Hampshire's fate. Among the five they appointed was Chuck Moulton, a former Judicial Committee chair and former LNC vice chair. Moulton is among the voices allegedly present in the recording above.

"An Angry Seebeck," a Judicial Committee candidate who was passed over for one of the appointments, commented on the Third Party Watch coverage of the story:

"That's not respecting the will of the delegates. That's a cop-out, pure and simple. As for the motions: The motions voted down were done so in the interests of time only because the convention schedule was so messed up that everything on Sunday and Monday was rushed. I voted against them (and my own interests!) for that reason. I put my trust in those two. It appears that I was mistaken. I was told directly I was in consideration and that I was wanted on the committee. Apparently I was lied to. So much for the NAP, eh?"

Read that again carefully, and let it sink in.

Patterns and rulings

With quorum set at five and only two people elected, it is impossible for a chair to have been elected by only two committee members, yet Moellman was already being treated as one.

The bylaws do not authorize what happened next. Article 8, Section 1 provides that "the remaining members of the Judicial Committee shall appoint new members if vacancies occur." That language presupposes a committee that was seated and then lost members. It says nothing about two people who never reached the five-member quorum, and it does not grant a sub-quorum pair the power to appoint the majority of the body. The one place the bylaws do hand the filling of seats to a convention, they limit it to a single circumstance: "Should all Judicial Committee positions be vacant, an Intervening convention may fill such vacancies." Seats were not all vacant here, so that route was foreclosed, but its existence shows the drafters knew how to assign this power and chose to give the committee's own appointment authority only to a functioning, quorate body. Two members electing themselves a chair and then hand-picking the remaining five is the exercise of a power the rule never conferred.

Moellman's recent history with his own affiliate is its own story. This past spring he sued the Libertarian Party of Kentucky after a ballot miscount, an alleged problem which he oversaw and certified as that convention's chair. The court dismissed the case with prejudice against Moellman's claims on May 22, during the national convention. Moellman then took a seat through the Ohio delegation instead of the Kentucky one, while chairing the national Credentials Committee, the body responsible for vetting delegate authorizations.

Once "seated as Chair" of the Judicial Committee, Moellman became the person deciding what would be considered in the New Hampshire matter.

On July 10, six state affiliates filed a joint amicus brief in the appeal. Moellman rejected it the next morning, citing JC Rule 2.5, which requires proof of authorization for petitions. Region 1 Representative Austin Martin replied that Rule 2.5 governs petitions, not amicus briefs, and that requiring affiliates to submit internal bylaws for review would itself violate the affiliate autonomy the bylaws guarantee. Moellman conceded the Rule 2.5 point the same day, but raised another. His new claim is that read together, Rules 1.7, 2.4, and 7.1 limit amicus filings to sustaining members, and affiliates are not members according to the bylaws.

The dispute has continued on the LNC's public list since. LPHI Secretary Abbra Green wrote that affiliates were being told their voice only counts if they pay dues. His point was that no state should have to buy a membership to be heard in a case deciding whether it can be expelled.

Region 6 Representative Alfa Shaw wrote separately that in its first case, the committee had rejected ten filings, all from one side of the appeal, without a recorded vote, and that the pattern left the impression LPNH's appeal "was decided before it was even filed."

Shaw also documented his concerns with the committee's newly adopted Rules of Appellate Procedure, which he summed up plainly at the end:

"The rules do not detail mechanisms for challenging JC procedural decisions, redactions, or rejections beyond the JC itself. This creates a self-policing body."

At-Large Representative Keith Thompson pushed back on the affiliates' amicus approach but agreed that, under a "strict reading" of the rules, the committee should be voting before it rejects a submission.
Martin demanded the documentation of such votes in a formal records request to the JC. As of the time of this writing,

The hearing date has been set for July 30, 2026.

As planned

The pattern is hard to ignore. In both the at-large and Judicial Committee races, the same maneuver appeared to stop the votes and points of order that would have handed contested seats to a wider field, and let a smaller group appoint instead. In the at-large race, that produced a board with the votes to disaffiliate. In the Judicial Committee race, it produced two members with the power to pick the other five. The recording documents intent. The committees' conduct since has done little to put that concern to rest.

LNC News covers the governance and internal affairs of the Libertarian National Committee. Source documentation for this piece is available on the committee's public list.