The Secretary of State’s Office said Friday the decision by Strafford County Superior Court Judge Brian Tucker means there will be no change in the current voter registration forms. Deputy Secretary of State David Scanlan said the disputed language change for voter registration forms — passed by the Legislature in 2012 and challenged in court by four University of New Hampshire students and the League of Women Voters as unconstitutional — was never implemented. A preliminary injunction was granted by a different Strafford County judge, and the state Supreme Court let the ruling stand in October 2012. … Then-House Speaker Bill O’Brien had supported changing the registration law primarily to prevent students from outside New Hampshire but attend college in the state from being allowed to vote in New Hampshire college towns.
He argued college students tend to vote liberal. He was quoted as telling a group of conservatives: “They don’t have life experience and they just vote their feelings.”The judge wrote that RSA 651:1 states every inhabitant of the state, having a single established domicile for voting purposes, being a citizen and meeting the age requirement, has a right to vote.
But the intention to change that domicile at some future time, does not terminate the established domicile and thus, wrote Tucker: “… a citizen must be a domiciliary but not necessarily a resident of New Hampshire in order to vote.”
Full Article: 2012 voter registration law null — for now | New Hampshire Politics.