|
If you don't have a government-issued photo ID, you can fill out an affidavit and mark your ballot. The affidavit and the ballot will be sealed in an envelope and kept by the city or town clerk. If you can't get to the clerk's office during regular business hours in three days - by the Friday after the Tuesday election - to show the required ID, your ballot won't count even if you're on the checklist as a qualified voter.
If you do get back to the clerk with an ID, the envelope with your ballot and the signed affidavit will be opened, checked and counted. When it was pointed out by someone on the House Election Law Committee that the ballot would no longer be secret, the response was, "No one will look."
The rest of the bill is such a hodgepodge of details so poorly written that it's unclear how any of it would work.
Of course, under the O'Brien regime, there was no public hearing on this version of SB 129. The first version of SB 129 was pretty much the template being used by GOP legislators across the country. After every speaker at a Senate Public and Municipal Affairs hearing opposed the bill, it was sent to the Senate Finance Committee where an entirely new version calling for taking photos at the polling place was substituted. The Senate voted on this second version of SB 129 without holding a public hearing. Sen. Bob Odell (R-Lempster) voted with the Democrats against the bill.
Fifteen organizations and individuals spoke or signed in against version #2 in the House Election Law Committee. No one spoke in favor. The photo-at-the-polling-place bill was supposed to be voted on by the Election Law Committee on April 25. On April 24, without any public notice, a subcommittee chaired by Rep. Kathleen Hoelzel (R-Raymond) was formed to amend the bill.
Chair of Election Laws Rep. David Bates (R-Windham) told the subcommittee that they were to get rid of the photo-at-the-polling-place idea and provide for ballots (called provisional ballots) to be included in the bill. After he left, much to the amazement of the observers, for the first time there began to be some concerns expressed about disenfranchising so many people. There was general discussion but no actual proposals by lunchtime.
At lunchtime, Bates returned to speak with Hoelzel. After lunch, Bates called for a Republican caucus which went on for a while with Bates waving his arms around and speaking loudly, although not loud enough for the observers and Democrats in the hall to hear what he was saying. When the observers and Democrats were invited back into the room, Hoelzel announced it was getting late and the bill needed to be written, so the work session was over.
The next day, after the House session ended, O'Brien and his minions showed up at the Election Law Committee room and called for a Republican caucus to be held in the room next door. Soon, most of the Republicans left the caucus, returned to the Election Law Committee room and sat around the table. Bates, O'Brien and Reps. Richard Drisko (R-Hollis), Shawn Jasper (R-Hudson) and Susan DeLemus (R-Rochester) remained behind in the caucus room. After a lot of shouting by O'Brien, DeLemus left the caucus room in tears. Eventually, Bates, O'Brien, Drisko, Jasper and DeLemus as well, joined the rest of the Election Law Committee and the meeting was called to order. A red-faced Jasper left after a few minutes and was replaced by one of O'Brien's minions.
Version #3 of SB 129 (nothing like version #2) was then unveiled to the committee for the first time. Bates announced it was late and people were tired (he said this repeatedly throughout the meeting) and then said no one should feel pressured to hurry through the vote. After an embarrassingly long hesitation, Bates did grant a Democratic request that Secretary of State Bill Gardner be invited to speak although the meeting was not a public hearing.
Gardner said he did not support introducing provisional ballots into New Hampshire because, among other things, it would make it almost impossible for the state to meet Constitutional and federal requirements for certifying elections and mailing out absentee ballots between primary and general elections. Our recounts are completed in a couple of weeks. Legal challenges to provisional ballots can last for months. It took nine months, for instance to settle Minnesota's Al Franken-Norm Coleman election.
Gardner spoke about a few other problems with the bill and the Democrats pointed out many issues but Bates kept saying it was getting late and the bill had to be voted on to meet a deadline. He never explained what the deadline was or why the bill couldn't be retained for further study.
Under O'Brien's watchful eye, the bill was passed with the Democrats and Rep. Drisko voting against and the rest of the Republicans and O'Brien's minions voting in favor. Rep. Drisko, one of the few well-mannered Republicans left, supports requiring a photo ID but thought the bill needed a lot of improvement and wanted to retain it to work on it. At the previous day's subcommittee he said he expected to be "excommunicated" for his position.
The 50,000 to 75,000 people expected to show up at the next election without a government-issued photo ID are overwhelmingly elderly, disabled, poor, members of minority groups and the young. Wonder why O'Brien doesn't want any of those people to vote?
|
