It started on a brisk Saturday in January, as I pulled up to the Portsmouth Public Library.
I had agreed to speak to a new organization, Indivisible New Hampshire, which I heard about from a few friends. I decided to see what might happen if my organization, America Votes New Hampshire, worked with them on voting rights rollbacks in Concord.
Three hours later, I walked out with clarity on how my organization, the voting rights coalition, and I could play a role in the resistance ahead. We were going to talk about voting rights, and we were going to train hundreds of people to talk about it with their neighbors, legislators and town officials.
This legislative season has been one like no other. Progressives are out of power at every level of government for the first time in decades. Forty bills (a record number) were introduced in the state Legislature that could drastically change our popular same-day registration voting system.
The New Hampshire Campaign for Voting Rights came to a head this week as the state Legislature both supported a much-needed electronic poll book bill and passed a bill that undermines our popular same-day voter registration system. This has been a tumultuous year for our state and our country. And it’s barely June.
The energy and voices we are seeing are organic. This energy comes from everyday people who took that first uncomfortable step to walk into a room full of people they didn’t even know and to ask how they could help. There were dozens of people sitting in stuffy committee rooms to see the unglamorous hearing process. They muddle through talking to their neighbors and making awkward call after call to their state legislators and town clerks, not compelled by a shiny national campaign.
My faith is restored a little more each time I sit down with a newcomer, or sit down with groups who welcome us into their meetings in library basements and around their kitchen tables.
I’m not from New Hampshire. I came here as part of a career move that put me at the intersection of the first-in-the-nation, social change and good ol’ fashioned organizing. I’m one of those thirty-something young professionals who politicians say they desperately want to see thrive and “stay, work and play” in the Granite State as New Hampshire faces a serious retirement cliff.
Yet the tenor of our politics is becoming more exclusive and partisan with every passing day. It’s starting to feel like my home state of Missouri. I want to know where the voting rights leaders are. I want to know where the social innovators are. We are going to have to bring them to Concord, day after day. We are going to have to elect them. We are the change we want to see. If you can’t join them, beat them.
New Hampshire ranks third in the country for voter participation, but we could be first. I look to our local and state elected leaders to be above the political fray and make voting accessible for eligible citizens. This includes people like me, who may have come thinking it was a short-term job and stayed. Young, diverse people who fall in love with the fact they can be on the coast on Friday and deep in the mountains on Saturday.
New Hampshire can look to technology advancements, not rollbacks, to preserve and improve our wildly popular same-day voter registration system. We need new leaders who can look to how our neighbors and eight other states across the country have accepted automatic voter registration to keep our voter rolls accurate, clean and inclusive.
Many Southern and Western states have looked to technology to address concerns about the integrity of our process. We don’t need any more fearmongering commissions on fraud. We need innovative thinkers to help identify local solutions. We need to look beyond partisan politics to figure it out.
Granite Staters have tremendous potential to engage those who are new to our state, be they members of the military, students or new workers. We have a tremendous opportunity to leverage next wave activists and organizations across this state to do right by our state constitution. In fact, if we do, a lot of people like me are likely to stay. We want to be where the bipartisan visionaries are.
We’re first in the nation. Let’s act like it.
(Paula Hodges of Concord is the state director for America Votes New Hampshire, led the N.H. Campaign for Voting Rights and is founding chair of New Leaders Council N.H.)