New Hampshire law to limit voting by non-resident college students in the state
Seems to me that New Hampshire would be well within its rights to require that students vote by absentee ballot in their states of origin rather than their temporary home of NH, unless they’ve established residency in New Hampshire. But NH state Democrats as well as other Democrats oppose it:
The New Hampshire voter suppression law is intended to disenfranchise college students from exercising their right to vote. I have signed @jeanneshaheen’s petition to oppose this law to send a clear message to students — your vote matters and must be protected.
— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) April 22, 2019
Senator Jeanne Shaheen, New Hampshire senator, also calls it a “voter suppression law” in the usual Orwellian fashion of the left.
A voting age of 18 (rather than 21, as in my youth) tends to favor Democrats in general. But allowing non-resident students to vote in a state such as New Hampshire, with such a tiny resident population and a not-insignificant number of university students, means the non-resident student vote might matter even more in the outcome.
Here are the issues involved in this “voter suppression” law (emphasis mine):
Under current law, New Hampshire is the only state that doesn’t require residency.
How do you like that? Shaheen and Harris and the rest somehow fail to mention that little tidbit.
More:
[Opponents] say the law, which takes effect July 1, burdens their right to vote by requiring new voters to shift their home state driver’s licenses and registrations to New Hampshire.
“Under this law, I have to pay to change my California license to be a New Hampshire one,” one of the students, Maggie Flaherty, said in a statement. “If I vote and don’t change my license within 60 days, I could even be charged with a misdemeanor offense with up to one year in jail.”
Cry me a river, Maggie.
More:
Republican Gov. Chris Sununu initially expressed concerns about the constitutionality of the law, which was passed by the then-Republican controlled Legislature last year. He requested an advisory opinion from the state Supreme Court. The court said eliminating the distinction between “residency” and “domicile” for voting purposes would be constitutional, siding with Republicans who argued out-of-state college students who vote in New Hampshire should be subject to the same requirements as everyone else.
Sununu, who signed the bill into law in July, had said it “restores equality and fairness to our elections.” Democrats argued it amounts to a poll tax and would deter students from voting. In its ruling, the court said that even if removing the distinction between residency and domicile creates a burden on them, the state has a compelling reason for making the change…
Deputy Secretary of State David Scanlan had spoken in favor of the bill last year. He emphasized that neighboring states require those who vote in their states to become residents, subject to motor vehicle and other laws.
There it is again, that pesky little detail.
[NOTE: Just to take an example, blue as blue can be Massachusetts has this requirement for student voters:
Registering to vote in Massachusetts makes you a resident for the purposes of your driver’s license and vehicle registration. If you drive your vehicle in Massachusetts, you have 30 days from when you register to vote to register your vehicle and get a Massachusetts driver’s license. For more information, contact the Massachusetts Department of Motor Vehicles.
And Cory Booker, senator from New Jersey, has this to say:
Students are the ones who will have to deal with the decisions lawmakers make for decades to come—protecting their right to vote is paramount. Thank you, @JeanneShaheen, for leading the fight in New Hampshire to protect student voters. I'm proud to support this fight. https://t.co/5TEdIGOZPo
— Cory Booker (@CoryBooker) April 22, 2019
But the NJ law seems similar to the NH law:
Voting in New Jersey may be considered a declaration of residency, potentially making you subject to other laws that govern state residents.
That would mean registering your car, it seems to me.]
Idiocracy chiseled in granite is Shaheen’s evident aim, such is the quality of her discourse. Pathetic world these politicians live in today, is it not?
They should vote absentee at their permanent addresses at home. It’s not very difficult. Registering in New Hampshire would require notifying the DMV every year when they have a new campus address, and updating their driver’s licenses. They can register and get new driver’s licenses in their new permanent locations when they grow up.
When my daughter started at U of Arizona, the first thing I did was reregister her car and get her an AZ DL. AZ cops HATE California plates and will stop them for any excuse.
This is pure politics.
Concerning the controversy:
(1) The outrage is phony: it isn’t “voter suppression” — except that it prevents students from voting in both places. (I base this on conversations with college students over the years.) Especially if you have an apartment most of the year, it’s easy to establish residency and vote absentee. I suspect that this is one of the reasons that the Trump administration wanted to look at voter fraud. If you look for people voting in multiple states, it’s easy to prove.
(2) NH has the first primary, so voting in NH is a big deal. If you talk to college-age kids who move from state to state during presidential primaries, they will basically admit that they are voting in multiple states, and this has an impact on the primaries.
My opinion: Just like people who own multiple homes, there should be a uniform legal process for people to establish and declare a single residency. That location should be easy to check; it should define where you pay taxes; and it should define where you vote. Period. If a student becomes a NH resident, fine. If you own multiple houses, you get to pick one, and you vote and pay taxes there. As you correctly state: that’s the state where your driver’s license comes from.
any measures to Deter voter frauds will be obfuscated by the democrats as voter suppression
One tangential thought that I think is relevant, but will never come into play; the major argument for lowering the voting age to 18 was that citizens who could be sent to fight our wars should have the vote. Well, never mind that the expanded voting privilege included women, who have never been subject to the draft. But, now that no one is subject to the draft, there is really no justification for extending the privilege of the vote to a segment that, for the most part, has not even reached the level of maturity sufficient to be self supporting.
I would suggest that a reasonable criterion would be a citizen who has paid income taxes; and therefore has made an investment in the country.
It is quite obvious from what they are advocating that the Democrats care nothing about the integrity and fairness of our voting process, about us as individual citizens and about our fate, or about the fate of our Republic.
The Democrats only care about winning, about getting and keeping power, and they will say or do whatever it takes–no matter how harmful, low down, or evil it might be–if it will enable them to grasp and keep that power.
In California, you have 30 days to register your car and update your DL. Woe to those who try to skirt DMV fees by having plates that don’t match the state on your DL! The only exception is active duty military.
When my children were students, they voted by absentee ballot, since the family manse was their permanent residence. Not a big deal.
Who knew over 10 years ago that it would get this far…
and you haven’t seen anything yet!
they are desperate to be in power the last time…
this train has no brakes and all it will do is pick up steam given the ‘science’ and so forth is not being challenged as it wasn’t in 1933 and justifying things then in similar ways…
You have academics and more supplying justification to action or prevention…
All speaking in have to’s and urgent’s, and the more left and extreme, the better
because extreme stuff is not opposed and so becomes truth to those looking
Like the GW and AGW and CC, the attributions and ideas get more and more extreme but all of them share the same core messages that the rest springs forth like flowers from Narcissus head.
Democrats argued it amounts to a poll tax and would deter students from voting.
“Poll Tax”
Basically, the Democrats of the past had this idea to keep people from voting
Later the Democrats have used this idea to keep people from preventing illegal voting
They know that the American public only has to lose once the wrong way…
It will never get back to the original constitution, so wont ever return what will be lost
and the pol landscape is littered with all manner of things the public can step in and lose from
Some are now baked in and have to happen in some manner to resolve them, so its fait accompli going in
I don’t mind that in the end, they all want to kill people like me who get in the way of whatever fever dream has gripped them. (Old forestry saying: “Once a bear gets hooked on garbage there’s no cure.”) What I hate is the fact that they want to endlessly irritate me before trying it.
This is political BS. Where you are legally resident is already determined by tax laws and motor vehicle laws. If there are state laws that are in conflict with each other and result in disenfranchising a citizen, then this needs to be addressed. Short of that, this is an invented problem that doesn’t exist as an issue.
The exactly mirrors the arguments at the Constitutional Convention on how to count slaves. The South, ie, the Democrats, wanted them to count as a whole person so that they could pack the House and Electoral College and never lose. The North didn’t want them counted at all since they weren’t citizens with any rights. The final ugly compromise was to count each slave as three fifths of a citizen.
So today, we again have the Democrats wanting to have illegals, non-citizens, non-resident students, and anyone else unqualified, allowed to vote so that they can pack the House and Electoral College.
The old thing about out of state tuition, what makes a person a resident of a state and all that should matter. When my son finished high school he wanted to go to college in Colorado, he had lettered in down hill skiing in high school in Minnesota before we moved back to Texas and because of my divorce from his mom I was in no position to pay out of state rates for college. He moved on up to Colorado, got a CO drivers license, tagged his crappy little car in Colorado and worked for a year living in a mobile home with three other young guys, working as a ski technician at Winter Park living on a diet of frozen burritos paying his own way at the time becoming established as a Colorado resident.
As a resident he enrolled in Western State College in Gunnison and I was able to help him thru college without occurring loans, he got those doing post-grad and they took a long time to pay off. Anyway, he has maintained his Colorado residency since the early 1990’s and after some years in Denver he is now back in Gunnison raising a family, being on the board of directors for the Crested Butte Cancer Society, doing a stint as the head of the directors of a non-profit pre-school, doing his year as head of his home owners associtation and that is becoming a resident of a community.
My son paid his dues to become a resident where he wanted to attend college and he votes, he did the Neo Con thing over the last ten years, he did leg work for Obama hoping for change and then he realized what was going on with the change therefore now he is staunch conservative, time and experience both matter when it comes to change.
Being a resident of a state,a city and a community is both a privilege and an obligation, not just a person passing through but an intention of putting down roots and sharing both the benefits and problems where you pledge your time and your treasure.
Pure politics. Sucking up to student voters. If any of these obsequious Democrats were told, with 100% certainty, the students in question would vote 50.00000000001% GOP for every office for the foreseeable future, oh how they’d change their tunes!
Ultimately, Democrats would extend the franchise to every human being (and maybe animals too) on the planet, if they could. They know the more voters there are, the higher number of ignorant voters, easily prone to manipulation by the MSM, the entertainment industry and academia.
“Voting in New Jersey may be considered a declaration of residency, potentially making you subject to other laws that govern state residents.”
Yes, and that should include paying state income taxes!
When I lived in a college town in OH, and ran for office there, it was clear the student vote was a formidable obstacle to my electoral success. As it turns out, I did not prevail, and attribute it in large part to the college vote. So when I ran for office a second time, I asked the electoral commission to check to see how many voters registered to vote in that district paid taxes and served on jury panels there. No way! That, I was told, was none of my business.
And now that the Democrats have perfected vote harvesting in CA, they no longer have to get the students to the polls. Just get them to register, and the party will take care of the rest!
The Dems want to enable fraud. The NH proposed law is to reduce fraud. The Dems commit fraud and feel they won’t get caught; but if they do, they won’t get punished; but if they do it won’t be bad.
Reps need honest voting rolls. And somehow to stop vote harvesting. Absentee voting, like I do from Slovakia, and mail-in voting locally are a bit different.
We need more polling place support. But those voters who can’t be bothered to “go vote”, well, the election doesn’t need their vote, and is likely more responsible without it.
Voters like a Free Lunch. And even when they know somebody else pays for it, so it’s not really free, as long as it’s Other People’s Money, many people want it. Even rich folk – see the 2008 TARP bailout of irresponsible rich bankers.
And now that the Democrats have perfected vote harvesting in CA, they no longer have to get the students to the polls. Just get them to register, and the party will take care of the rest!
You might be interested in this.
“Voter suppression” is what an ordinary mortal understands as ‘interferes with Democratic Party schemes to stuff the ballot boxes”.
Ideally, only an odd minority would vote by post: people living in remote locations (in places like Alaska), U.S. government employees stationed abroad (and spouses residing with them), U.S. servicemen (and spouses residing with them), college students, and shut-ins. The witless proliferation of convenience voting is an invitation to fraud, as is the wholly unnecessary resort to digital devices in tabulation.
That having been said, there are certain sorts of residences which should be deemed invalid as voting addresses, with those residing therein required to establish a notional residency with relatives and vote by post. That would include military base housing, college dormitories and apartment buildings, and custodial institutions like nursing homes, halfway houses, and group homes. The states should also be making a point to establish clearinghouses to detect people registered in multiple jurisdictions
What’s galling is the sanctimonious posturing of partisan Democrats coincident with tearing up the rule book. I’m not seeing how democratic institutions can be sustainable under these circumstances.
Did you catch this
https://alphanewsmn.com/minnesota-secretary-of-state-unwilling-to-provide-public-data-to-minnesota-voters-alliance-despite-court-rulings/
There are 11 counties in CA with more registered voters than residents.
There is a reason that Soros has a project, the Secretary of State Project, that you rarely see mentioned, which is designed to help insure that the maximum number of Democrats are elected to this unglamourous position.
Why?
This is the elected official in each State who has jurisdiction over elections, who enforces the election laws (see Florida), and who rules on/decides any election controversies.
Things like producing and maintaining the election rolls, how late the polls are open, decisions about emergency actions to keep certain polls open after the normal closing time. Counting procedures and security, counts and recounts, etc.
You can see how having a Democrat in control of this position might make the difference between a Republican candidate winning and losing an election in any state.