Voting rights advocates claim that no law changes are needed because voter fraud is rare in New Hampshire.
The problem is that nobody knows how common election fraud is because the Attorney General’s Office refuses to investigate the hundreds of voter registrations returned as undeliverable by the post office, and the laws are so weak that things that many people would consider fraudulent are actually legal.
Although I doubt that people were bused from Massachusetts to vote in the recent presidential election in New Hampshire, it would probably be legal under present law. More interesting, campaign staffers could probably vote legally in several states during a Presidential primary season due to the staggered election dates.
Surely many college students have no desire to return to the town where they graduated from high school but rather are hoping for a job in New York or Washington (depending on major), and military personnel expect to move along every few years often to unexpected locations. Thus a temporary location in New Hampshire may be as much home as anywhere, but that shouldn’t give them carte blanche to vote without accepting the other responsibilities of citizenship.
Communities maintain the same checklist to vote in local elections as federal elections, and this area is ripe for abuse as it takes far fewer votes to affect a local election. One might imagine a developer wanting a zoning change bringing in homeless people to vote in favor, or college students voting for the town to provide free ice cream (or beer).
There was an incident a few years ago when a clueless college student was elected county treasurer on a straight ticket but preferred attending classes to performing the duties of the office.
Why is it controversial to suggest that anyone who feels enough connection to a community to vote there should support that community through appropriate taxation and fees?
A driver’s license should not be required to vote, but if they have one it should be a New Hampshire license, and similarly for a car registration. Recent arrivals could be given a grace period, but it should not extend to a second election, and the state could use the voter registration as evidence to prosecute for tax evasion.
ROY SCHWEIKER
Concord