Former political rivals and former congressmen Dick Swett and Charlie Bass are joining together on a project to restore voter confidence.

Bass, a Peterborough Republican and Swett, a Bow Democrat, are co-chairs of the New Hampshire chapter of the Democracy Defense Project, and spoke to the Jaffrey-Rindge Rotary Club at Franklin Pierce University during the club’s meeting on Thursday.

The Democracy Defense Project is a bipartisan group, led by former elected officials across battleground states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — who engage the public in dialogue and restore faith in elections.

Bass served as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2007 and 2011 to 2013, four years in the New Hampshire State Senate and six years in the New Hampshire House.

Swett served as a member of the U.S. House from 1991 to 1995, and from 1998 to 2001 as the U.S. ambassador to Denmark.

“There’s a great concern in this country that our elections are being called into suspect, they’re fraudulent, there are people using and abusing the system to rig them — these are all things that have diminished voter confidence in the country,” Swett said. “In New Hampshire, in particular, we’ve been very sensitive about this.”

Swett said he was approached by the secretary of state of New Hampshire to co-chair a committee on voter confidence and to find out what issues in New Hampshire had people concerned.

“We spent over 40 hours with citizens listening to them, for the most part, complain about the election process. But some people had some positive things to say. But what was most evident was that we live in a state that has two things that stand out,” he said.

Swett said those things were high participation, and New Hampshire’s “intimate and informal” elections, which are usually conducted by “neighbors, friends, and people we know.”

He said most issues in New Hampshire elections come down to human error and were typically minor in scope.

Bass, who conducted his thesis at Dartmouth College on electoral behavior, said when he was approached about being Swett’s new co-chair after former co-chair John Sununu stepped down, he was very interested.

Bass said that as the United States prepares to celebrate its 250th anniversary, “the institutions of government have never been threatened as they are over the past few years.”

He said the most challenging aspect of government is the period of succession of power and transfer of leadership.

“That is the key. If the voters in this country lose confidence in the honesty, transparency, accuracy and trustworthiness of the political process that provides for the institution of the transfer of leadership, this country will not survive,” Bass said.

Swett said one of the things he and Bass are interested in doing is documenting how New Hampshire hosts its elections, as a “handbook.”

“We thought New Hampshire could offer itself as an example,” Swett said.

The other goal of the chapter is to do exactly what they were doing at the Rotary, Swett said — talk to people.

Ashley Saari can be reached at 603-924-7172 ext. 244 or asaari@ledgertranscript.com. She’s on X @AshleySaariMLT.