By GARRY RAYNO, InDepthNH.org
After Barack Obama won the 2008 presidential election with a seven-point victory over US. Sen. John McCain, the Republican lawmakers in New Hampshire and elsewhere began a campaign to keep many people home on voting day.
Obama’s vote included millions of Americans who never voted before or had not voted for years thinking their vote did not make a difference or they never had the opportunity to vote for a person who looked like them for president.
The word went out from the national Republican Party strategist to make it more difficult for marginal voters to turn out and vote.
The year before Obama won the presidency for the second time, the New Hampshire legislature passed a photo ID requirement to vote, but the bill was vetoed by then Gov. John Lynch who noted in states with similar laws, voter turnout was lower after it was instituted thus voters were disenfranchised.
The Nelson A. Rockefeller Center at Dartmouth College did a study to determine the effects photo ID might have on the electorate and instances of voter fraud and proposed different scenarios the state could pursue to “reform the voting process.”
For government issued photo IDs the center study found “While a strict photo ID law makes voter fraud much more difficult, evidence suggests such a reform also has the potential to exclude large portions of the electorate, especially those characterized as low-income, racial minority, disabled, minority-language young, and older citizens. Smith and Sobel find similar results, citing lack of mobility, lack of permanent address, difficulties navigating administrative checkpoints, lack of birth certificates (necessary to procure IDs) or linguistic barriers as barriers to acquiring government-issued photo IDs.”
One of the options the study looked at was not changing the current system which had been in place for some time and although there were only a handful of voter fraud cases, was to maintain the status quo.
However, the political climate was such that there were allegations of busloads of Massachusetts voters traveling to places like Durham to vote in elections, although there wasn’t any evidence presented except pictures of tour buses traveling through Plymouth.
The study cites an investigation done by the Attorney General’s Office in 2010 which found that the 352 residents who registered to vote between 2006 to 2010 without any form of photo identification were confirmed to be living at their listed address.
“Maintaining to the status quo and not enacting new voter ID requirements would avoid the effect of reducing voter turnout. This option is also the least expensive and cumbersome for the state to implement, as it does not require any further funds to be appropriated towards voter ID laws. However, sticking to the status quo does nothing to reduce the existing potential for voter fraud in NH,” the report stated.
The Legislature did not abide by the work of the Rockefeller Center and in 2012 passed New Hampshire’s first photo ID requirement by overriding Lynch’s veto and was in place for the 2012 election.
Since that time, there has been a steady stream of bills “tightening up the state’s voting process,” several of which have been overturned by the state Supreme Court as unconstitutional.
A number of changes to the voting process were approved, including last year when a citizenship requirement was added to register to vote, which impacted a number of potential voters who tried to register on election day.
The state approved election-day registration to bypass the federal Motor Voter law which required states to register voters when they register their vehicles. The change was instituted after the 2000 presidential election and the disastrous recount in Florida ended by the US Supreme Court’s partisan ruling.
If Al Gore had won New Hampshire instead of losing by a small margin to George W. Bush, the Florida Electoral College votes would not have made a difference.
Since that time, New Hampshire has gone from one of the least restrictive states to vote to one of the most restrictive.
This week we see some of the latest attempts to make it more difficult to vote, or what is really voter suppression.
If you look back to the study and who is affected the most by requiring a-government-issued photo ID, the list is low-income, racial minority, disabled, minority-language young, and older citizens.
Senate Bill 218, which the House votes on Thursday, requires that a person seeking an absentee ballot present proof of citizenship, age, domicile and identity.
The problem is as written, the bill would require registered voters seeking an absentee ballot, to prove their citizenship along with the other requirements.
They have already registered to vote and provide their identity, age and where they live; the only new information is proof of citizenship.
There are two ways to prove citizenship, a passport or a birth certificate, and many people have neither one in their possession.
This provision targets the young, the elderly and minorities. Many people don’t have their birth certificate for any number of reasons, including whether your parents never gave it to you or you lost it. Yes, you can retrieve a copy from the Secretary of State’s Office, but it is expensive and takes time and you will not be able to use that for same-day registration if you weren’t expecting to need those documents.
The only people who need a passport are people who travel outside the country, and not everybody does that.
And the citizenship requirement also targets women who have married and changed their name so that the name on the birth certificate is not the same as on her driver’s license.
Federal law prohibits non-citizens from voting in federal elections with the penalty up to a year in jail, so until recently, proof of citizenship was not something required to vote, but now it is in the toxic political anti-immigration environment.
Similarly, Senate Bill 287, requires a copy of your photo ID when applying for an absentee ballot. Again these are registered voters who are on the checklist and now they have to either go to the town or city clerk’s office with their photo ID or make a copy of it when they send the application for an absentee ballot to the clerk.
As Rep. Connie Lane, D-Concord, writes in the minority blurb on the bill, “The bill’s sponsors and advocates offered no evidence that the bill would make voting more ‘secure.’ No evidence of fraud under the current system was introduced. This bill, like many others passed over the past few years, is based purely on speculation and adds yet another barrier to exercising the right to vote – also known as voter suppression.”
And Senate Bill 221 would require city and town clerks to purge the voter checklist every year with a five-year look back which means someone had to vote within the last five years or past three election cycles or your name will be removed, and you won’t be able to vote without registering with all the new requirements.
Currently the voter checklists are purged once every 10 years with a four-year look back. The bill as introduced was for five years with a four-year, look back period.
When the purge was done the last time after the 2020 election it was about 25 percent of the names so a lesser period would be advisable with today’s mobility, but every year is going to be a great deal more work for city and town clerks and more and more people will arrive at the polls to vote, only to learn they are no longer a registered voter in their community and will have to re-register, which they can do at the polls, but chances are they did not bring the needed documents like passports and birth certificates to do that.
If these three bills make it into law, they will have their desired effect which is to suppress the vote and disenfranchise voters who do not favor Republicans.
This is how you maintain one-party control and how democracy dies.
Garry Rayno may be reached at garry.rayno@yahoo.com.
Distant Dome by veteran journalist Garry Rayno explores a broader perspective on the State House and state happenings for InDepthNH.org. Over his three-decade career, Rayno covered the NH State House for the New Hampshire Union Leader and Foster’s Daily Democrat. During his career, his coverage spanned the news spectrum, from local planning, school and select boards, to national issues such as electric industry deregulation and Presidential primaries. Rayno lives with his wife Carolyn in New London.