How easy is it to vote in New Hampshire?
Under current state law, you can literally show up on Election Day, register to vote on the spot, and vote in the First in the Nation primary — all without any form of ID.
And that’s still not good enough for Democrats.
Why? Because New Hampshire’s law says that if you want your vote to be counted, you have a week after voting to prove that you are who you say you are and live in the precinct where you voted.
New Hampshire Democrats have been fighting against voter ID requirements for years. Now the Democratic National Committee, with the backing of President Joe Biden, is joining in the fight against New Hampshire’s seven-day grace period.
The Democratic National Committee is suing New Hampshire officials over a Republican-backed election law that it claims will disenfranchise voters and have a chilling effect on key members of the party’s base in 2024.
The challenge, which was shared first with POLITICO, takes on a law passed last year that requires people who register and vote on Election Day without a photo ID to send in missing documentation to the state within seven days.
President Joe Biden’s campaign is backing the lawsuit. Senior officials on the team said they are concerned the legislation could affect critical voting blocs in the battleground state in the 2024 election, especially young people, college students and low-income voters.
Granite State Republicans argue that the current law is already too lax, and that it’s not an excessive burden to ask someone for ID when they register and vote.
Asked about the lawsuit Friday, New Hampshire Secretary of State David Scanlan said he’s only heard about it via the media.
“Virtually every other state in the country has a form of provisional ballot for when a voter’s qualifications have not been established on Election Day. In New Hampshire, the provisional voter gets to actually cast a ballot, and then is given the opportunity submit the missing documentation after the fact,” Scanlan told NHJournal.
About 800,000 people voted in the 2020 New Hampshire general election, and hundreds of thousands more in the presidential primary, state primary and municipal elections. Out of all those votes cast, cases of same-day registration without an ID “might be a couple of thousand, a fraction of one percent,” Scanlan estimated at a press event on write-in ballots earlier this year.
New Hampshire Republicans have been fighting for years to get clarity on the issue of “residency” and “domicile” for purposes of voting. The Granite State has the highest number of college students per capita in the country, and many Republicans want college students living in New Hampshire dorms to vote in the state of their legal residence, rather than their dorm address.
That fight has been lost for the moment, but support for requiring minimal ID in New Hampshire is strong, polls show.
“This is what the Democrats do; they sue, sue, sue until they get the outcome they want,” said state Sen. Regina Birdsell (R-Hampstead). “Mark Elias and his ilk know states have a limited budget and are banking on the states giving up.”
Elias was Hillary Clinton’s attorney who helped organize the debunked Russia collusion. He’s currently representing a Massachusetts marketing firm that sent illegal mailers into the NH-02 GOP primary last year.
“I never met anyone in New Hampshire who can’t prove who they are because they don’t have any identification,” added state Sen. Darryl Abbas (R-Salem).
“I’m 40 years old, and I can say with confidence that Joe Biden is the most anti-New Hampshire president in my lifetime.”
