my letter against HB 176

by: TimothyHorrigan

Wed Feb 09, 2011 at 06:59:29 AM EST

The letter itself is below the fold.  But first, I will say I do understand the fear that students might take over a town.  Even though non-students outnumber students in all of NH's college towns, it is true that a small group of students (or any element of the community) could thoeretically get together to win a municipal election.  The turnouts for those elections tend to be very small: e.g., on February 8, I went to the annual deliberative session for the Oyster River School District, which drew a grand total of 81 voters.  (We amended the budget slightly by a 51-30 vote.) But, the powers of local governments are strictly limited, terms of board members are usually staggered, and in any case students' opinions and priorities don't differ that much from other adults.

In response

To the editor: Douglas DeDe claims (in a Feb. 5 letter supporting an anti-student voting bill) that "there is nothing to prevent a local student who pays an electric bill in New Hampshire from voting on a national election while sending in an absentee-ballot to their 'hometown.'" Actually, RSA 659:34 and RSA 659:34-a of the New Hampshire lawbook make double voting a Class B felony, punishable by one to seven years' imprisonment.

The New Hampshire Secretary of State's and Attorney General's offices go to great efforts every election cycle to seek out voting fraud, and few if any cases of multiple voting have ever been found. Mr. DeDe admits as much when he says: "While there are no documented cases to my knowledge of such chicanery, its very possibility is enough to warrant a national (or state) requirement for presenting a valid state-issued identification to receive and cast a ballot."

What Mr. DeDe is saying is that we should take away a basic right from law-abiding citizens simply because it might hypothetically be abused. This would be grossly unfair- and it would also be illegal for the state of New Hampshire to enact HB 176 (the anti-student voting bill) before the Congress and a supermajority of the states get around to rescinding the 14th and 26th amendments, along with several other sections of the United States Constitution.

The United State Congress would also have to rescind the current federal voting-rights law before our legislature could pass HB 176. And, oh yeah, the voters of New Hampshire (student and nonstudent alike) would have to ratify an amendment to our own state constitution repealing (at a minimum) Articles 1, 2 and 11 of Part First (the Bill of Rights.)

In the meantime, aside from the fact that is grossly unconstitutional and a spectacularly bad idea, HB 176 has some technical issues. For example, there is no way to prove that a student who lives off-campus (e.g., UNH students who live in Dover) is in fact a student. Supervisors of the checklist don't know what a resident does for a living, and universities do not publish rosters of their student bodies.

Also, most students have jobs and some even own businesses: how would the supervisor distinguish between a working person who goes to school part time from a student who works part time?

State Rep. Timothy Horrigan
D-Durham