The NH House Special Committee on Redistricting recently approved new districts for the NH House by a party-line vote. The districts often flout Article 11 of Part 2 of the New Hampshire constitution. According to the state government website, Article 11 was amended in 2006 “to enable towns with sufficient population to have their own representative district.” The Republican majority failed to give Berlin its own district. During debate, Rep. Steven Smith offered a literal reading of Article 11, insisting that the city was not “within a reasonable deviation from the ideal population for one or more representative seats” and therefore it was not eligible for its own district. (The quote is from Article 11.)
The problem with Rep. Smith’s reading is that it runs counter to the legislative record when the 2006 amendment was debated and then presented to the voters for approval. Rep. Smith stated that he did not care what voters thought they were approving in 2006. He insisted that he was just reading the language of the constitution. So, we have a conundrum. Either Rep. Smith and the other Republicans on the committee are misleading the public today about the intent of Article 11 or the Republicans in the legislature in 2006 were misleading the public, when they described the amendment during the legislative debate and when they wrote the voters guide prior to the approval vote. Either way, the disdain of the Republicans for the voters is quite disturbing.
Phil Hatcher
Dover