Peter Oltman arrived at the Green Street Community Center at 11 a.m. on Tuesday to cast his ballot in Concord’s municipal election.
Oltman moved to the city from Boscawen in February and had not re-registered to vote yet. He hoped to register at his polling location but didn’t bring proof of citizenship.
This wouldn’t have been a problem in last year’s election, but a new law requires registering voters to prove their citizenship along with their identity and domicile. The law has posed barriers for voters like Oltman.
“It pissed me off, to tell you the truth,” the 62-year-old said after coming back to the Ward 4 polling location in the final minutes of voting.
The new law passed last year also requires all voters to bring a form of ID to the polls. Previously, voters who didn’t bring personal documentation used to sign an affidavit under the penalty of perjury swearing that they were being truthful about their identity.
This year, the New Hampshire Campaign for Voting Rights observed that 21 voters across all ten Concord wards were turned away on Election Day. At least 14 of those individuals were newly registering.
Ward 4 Supervisor of the Checklist Mary Fields said, if someone failed to bring proof of citizenship but previously registered to vote in New Hampshire, she checked the Secretary of State’s website so they wouldn’t need to have to their citizenship reapproved.
She tried to help Oltman this way, but his name didn’t appear on the state’s list.
“Why wasn’t my name on there when I voted at least a dozen times in Boscawen?” he said. “I don’t know why that happened.”
Some voters approve of the changes to election law. Michelle and Jonah Gosnell came to register at Ward 4 an hour before polls closed. The pair had come in earlier that day to double-check what they needed to bring in order to vote.
The Gosnells moved to Concord in February after living in Sutton since 2006, and Michelle Gosnell said she was a lifelong voter. She said she wasn’t aware of the new law change but was “glad they did it.”
“It gives less of a chance of people committing fraud or not being honest about who they are,” Michelle Gosnell said. “Little bit of checks and balances.”
McKenzie Taylor, the director of the New Hampshire Campaign for Voting Rights, sees the new law differently.
In 2022, well before the new law went into effect, New Hampshire was already ranked as the hardest state to vote in, according to The Election Law Journal.
“Before this law, New Hampshire’s elections were among the most secure and trusted in the nation, with high turnout and strong voter confidence,” Taylor said in a statement. “Now, that legacy is being undone by a law that blocks eligible voters from casting their ballot simply because they lack certain paperwork when they show up to the polls to exercise their constitutional right.”
There is also little evidence for voter fraud in New Hampshire.
Connie Lane, a democratic state representative on the election law committee, spoke at the Woman’s Club in Concord Wednesday night about her experience as part of the Republican majority that believes there are issues with the voting process.
Lane said most of the moderators that testified at the State House before the law was passed said they have never seen instances of fraud in their decades of experience.
“[House Republicans] think the machines are terrible, but really the errors that they’re finding are human errors,” she said. “The training that they give people who work it is long and tedious, and they take it very seriously.”
The law is being challenged in court by voting rights organizations and local voters, with a two-week trial scheduled for February.
Ward 10 moderator Jae Whitelaw, who has moderated for over 10 years, said the change affected a slew of different people: women who changed their name after marriage or divorce, the elderly who may not have original documentation and the homeless population.
Whitelaw witnessed a veteran arrive at the Ward 10 polling location on Election Day with only his military ID. He had to be turned away, and he never came back, she said.
“Our ultimate mission at the polls is to be sure that anyone can vote, who is authorized by law to vote, who has a constitutional right to vote,” Whitelaw said. “That man had a constitutional right to vote, and he was denied that right because he didn’t have the new documentation that’s required, which is a change from how it has always been here. And I don’t like that.”
Robert Waterman, the moderator at Ward 3, said he believes that proving a person’s citizenship is, overall, a good idea, but the change is affecting people who recently moved and don’t have immediate access to their sensitive documents.
“The law is not a good law the way it is written now,” he said.
The New Hampshire Campaign for Voting Rights said in a statement that at least 100 people across the state were turned away on Election Day because of their lack of documentation.
“That’s 100 too many people denied the constitutional right to vote because they didn’t have this new paperwork they have to have,” Whitelaw said.