New Hampshire: Proposed election law changes called unfair to students | Union Leader

Proposed changes to New Hampshire election law could unfairly disenfranchise college students, seasonal residents, university professors, military personnel, and all sorts of transient workers, according to opponents of the legislation who dominated testimony on several election-related bills before the House Election Law Committee. State Rep. David Bates, R-Windham, sponsor of three measures debated Tuesday, said his bills are not aimed at any particular segment of the population. “All I’m trying to do is ensure that only residents of our state are voting in New Hampshire,” he said. “My objective is to return to what our state laws always used to be, which required a person to be a resident in order to vote here.”

New Hampshire: Legislators Mull Changes to Voting Laws | Associated Press

Proposals to change New Hampshire’s voting laws, including narrowing the definition of who is eligible to vote, are facing favorable terrain this year in the Republican-controlled Legislature. At least a dozen pieces of legislation center on ending Election Day registration, voting eligibility and giving the secretary of state more power to enforce election law. Supporters of the legislation, mainly Republicans, say the changes are necessary to ensure a fair voting process. Many of the bills are up for public hearings this week. “I’m trying to do what a lot of my citizens are asking me to do,” said Sen. Regina Birdsell, a Republican co-sponsor of legislation that would require someone to live in the state for at least 13 days before voting. But critics, including the American Civil Liberties Union and League of Women Voters, allege the changes will restrict the rights of certain people to vote. The New Hampshire Campaign for Voting Rights called the bills a “ploy to disengage voters from the political system.”

New Hampshire: Forty bills in New Hampshire Legislature target voting | Union Leader

As many as 40 bills to change New Hampshire election law will soon be working their way through the Legislature, but only a few are likely to find their way to the desk of a newly elected governor who has made election reform a top priority. Many election-related bills have been proposed by State Rep. David Bates, R-Windham. “Most of my changes focus on facilitating better enforcement of our existing voter requirements and do not add any new requirement in order for people to vote,” he said. Bates will be among those attending a private meeting at the State House scheduled for today with House Speaker Shawn Jasper, other legislative leaders and key committee chairs to craft a coordinated strategy for the election law agenda.

New Hampshire: Attorney General seeks high court review of rulings against ‘ballot selfie’ ban | Union Leader

The state Attorney General’s office has officially asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review lower court rulings striking down a New Hampshire ban on “ballot selfies.” The petition for writ of certiorari, filed two days after Christmas, comes as state legislators are considering a bill to reverse the 2014 law that prohibited a voter from taking a photo of their marked ballot and posting it online. The ban is clearly unconstitutional, as the U.S. District Court found in 2015, which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit affirmed last September, said Rep. Steve Vaillancourt, R-Manchester, the prime sponsor of the bill to wipe the “ballot selfie” ban off the books.

New Hampshire: Expected rush of election law reform bills prompts change in state Senate committee structure | WMUR

With election law reform expected to be a major issue in the upcoming legislative session, state Senate Republicans intend to adjust the body’s committee structure to meet what is expected to be rush of bills on the topic. A rule change the Senate is expected to pass when it meets to organize on Wednesday is a measure to create an Election Law and Internal Affairs Committee. “The rationale for it is that election law issues are going to be a major topic, and it deserves its own committee,” Senate Majority Leader Jeb Bradley said Monday. In the House, meanwhile, a Republican lawmaker said he intends to file at least 10 bills that would deal with election law reform – an issue described as a priority by Gov.-elect Chris Sununu as he prepares to take office on Jan. 5.

New Hampshire: With Dozens of Election Law Bills on Deck, Here Are Five Issues to Watch in 2017 | New Hampshire Public Radio

From changes in voting registration to changes to party primaries or the Electoral College, New Hampshire lawmakers are preparing a slew of bills aimed at reforming the state’s elections. In all, at least 40 bills aimed at tinkering with the state’s election laws are in the works for 2017. At least fifteen of those bills come from just one lawmaker, Representative David Bates, a Republican from Windham who has made revising the state’s voting rules a top focus in recent terms. On one side of the aisle, Bates and other Republicans have their eyes on tightening up the rules around who can vote here, but there are lots of different, sometimes diverging, paths on what that would look like.

New Hampshire: Abandoning same-day voter registration could be expensive | New Hampshire Union Leader

When it comes to achieving one of Governor-elect Chris Sununu’s top priorities – reforming New Hampshire’s election laws – the Newfields Republican is presented with a troublesome bargain. It’s possible that he could convince the Republican-led Legislature to get rid of the state’s same day voter registration law which he says is too “loose” and makes us more vulnerable to fraud. But in so doing, he’ll likely have to accept even more expansive and expensive access for the public to register to vote, a trade off which many of his fellow conservatives will not like. “This presents a whole host of not only expensive, several million dollars to pay for it, but a lot of undesirable things as well,” said State Rep. David Bates, R-Windham, who has authored more than a dozen other bills to overhaul election laws in 2017. “I don’t think it would resolve the concerns but it would introduce other problems.”

New Hampshire: Gardner to Serve 21st Term as S.O.S; Hints at Taking Closer Look at N.H.’s Voting Laws | New Hampshire Public Radio

Bill Gardner, best known as the guardian of New Hampshire’s First in the Nation Presidential Primary, was elected to his 21st consecutive term as Secretary of State Wednesday. Gardner was chosen by both legislative chambers with no serious opposition. Having held the position since 1976, Gardner is the longest serving Secretary of State in the country. But during his victory speech, Gardner, whose office oversees state elections, told the packed House Chamber that taking a closer look at the New Hampshire’s voting laws…wouldn’t be a bad idea.

New Hampshire: Republicans Looking to Tighten Election Laws | New Hampshire Public Radio

Though there is no evidence behind President-elect Donald Trump’s recent claim of “serious’’ voter fraud in New Hampshire, the state could see a handful of election law changes now that Republicans are in charge at the State House. Gov.-elect Chris Sununu wants to eliminate Election Day registration, while fellow Republicans in the legislature have long sought a 10- or 30-day residency requirement. They say the changes would give voters more confidence in New Hampshire’s election systems. ‘‘It’s simply about doing things the right way,’’ Sununu recently told WMUR-TV of his calls to eliminate same-day registration. Sununu was not immediately available for a comment to The Associated Press. The offices of both the Attorney General and Secretary of State say there aren’t enough complaints to back up any assertions of wide-scale voter fraud. Trump tweeted Sunday that the media is ignoring ‘‘serious fraud’’ in New Hampshire, Virginia and California, without providing evidence for his claims.

New Hampshire: Recounts unlikely to change results, but get lots of attention | Union Leader

Democratic state Rep. Deborah Wheeler is no stranger to post-election recounts. She’s helped conduct many in her three terms as a representative for Northfield and parts of Franklin. But on Tuesday, she wasn’t helping to count. The 72-year-old retired tax auditor was there to watch the process in the hope that it would erase a 25-vote deficit that separated her from the winning Republican, Ryan Smith. But like most recounts, this one failed to change the result, although it did narrow Smith’s margin of victory from 25 votes to 13 (1,505-to-1,480) Smith, a 20-year-old criminal justice student at St. Anselm College, decided to run when he learned that incumbent Republican Gregory Hill was the only Republican on the ballot in a district that elects two representatives. “No one was going to fill that seat on the ticket, and I have things to say so I thought, I’ll throw my hat in the ring and see what happens,” he said as he took a step away from monitoring the counting on Wednesday at the Legislative Office Building.

New Hampshire: University of Florida-Developed Voting Machine For Disabled Used On Election Day | WUFT

A voting machine developed at the University of Florida helped voters with different disabilities to cast their ballots in this month’s elections. Prime III, or the Premier Third Generation Voting System, was used statewide in New Hampshire — the first state to certify use of the machine — on Election Day. … With Prime III, a blind person, for example, votes by putting on headphones, and following audio prompts for the various races, they vocalize their choices. Someone without arms or someone who otherwise can’t write does the same. Juan Gilbert, chair of UF’s Computer and Information Science and Engineering Department, came up with the idea for the voting technology after Congress passed the Help America Vote Act in 2002. The act required every voting precinct to have one voting machine for people with disabilities. But Gilbert saw the new legislation and didn’t think of it as the best solution. “We saw that, and we thought that could be a problem because you’re creating a separate-but-equal connotation in voting. And we were right.”

New Hampshire: In a connected world, New Hampshire voting machines are isolated – by choice | Concord Monitor

With concerns being raised across the country about the possibility that hackers could interfere with electronic voting machines, it’s timely to note that in a world of smart devices, New Hampshire’s ballot-counting machines are deliberately dumb. Say what you will about rigged elections and the chance of election officials missing cases of voter fraud: When it comes to the mechanical end of the state’s voting system, it’s a tight process. Security cameras, thermostats and even some automobiles might interact online these days, but not the hundreds of ballot-counting machines stored in town halls across New Hampshire. “They cut the pins off, so you can’t put the modems back in, even if you wanted to,” said Ben Bynum, town clerk in Canterbury, as he showed the town’s single AccuVote machine, locked away in a vault until pre-election testing begins. The only way to change these machines is to insert a memory card programmed by LHS Associates in Salem, and you can’t do that unless you first cut off a metal tamper-proof seal. And if you don’t record the proper identification numbers in the proper place in the proper book with a the signature of a witness, that will raise suspicions from people like Bynum and Deputy Town Clerk Lisa Carlson.

New Hampshire: Federal appeals court strikes down ballot selfies ban | Union Leader

A federal appeals court on Wednesday soundly struck down New Hampshire’s ban on ballot selfies concluding it restricted innocent, political speech in the pursuit of what the judges called an “unsubstantiated and hypothetical danger” of vote-buying. A three-judge panel unanimously concluded that the state’s 2014 ban was unconstitutionally over broad. “The ballot selfie prohibition is like burning down the house to roast the pig,” wrote Judge Sandra Lynch in a 22-page decision. The state will now weigh its options, which include appealing this case to the U.S. Supreme Court, Deputy Secretary of State David Scanlan said. “We’ll probably have a better idea later Thursday about how we proceed from here,” Scanlan said.

New Hampshire: How the ballot selfie went from a New Hampshire voting booth all the way to federal court | Boston Globe

A federal appeals court in Boston will hear arguments Tuesday on a case that junctures the contentious issues of free speech, the integrity of the voting process, and selfies. Yes, selfies—specifically, so-called ballot selfies. The state of New Hampshire is appealing a ruling last year that struck down the state’s law explicitly banning voters from taking and posting photos with or of their ballots. The law, which carries a fine up to $1,000 for violators, went into effect shortly before New Hampshire’s 2014 state primary. The act intended to protect against vote buying in the digital age; what it got was widespread protest and a two-year legal saga. Leon Rideout knew what he was doing. “It was sort of a protest photo,” the Republican state representative from Lancaster said in an interview.

New Hampshire: Appeals court skeptical of New Hampshire’s ballot-selfie ban | Reuters

Three federal appeals court judges showed skepticism on Tuesday on how a 2014 New Hampshire law banning voters from taking selfies with their ballots on election day does not violate the U.S. right to free speech. The judges repeatedly asked a New Hampshire official to explain how the law could prevent a replay of scandals that rocked many U.S. states in the late 19th century, when politicians paid for votes, in cash or alcohol. “It’s well known that in the late 1800s, buying votes was a huge problem,” Stephen LaBonte, the state’s associate attorney general, told a three-judge panel of the First Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals in Boston. “What year is it now?” Judge Sandra Lynch shot back. “In the late 1800s there was a huge problem that obviously didn’t involve ballot-selfies, which did not exist at the time.”

New Hampshire: Appeals Court to Review New Hampshire’s Ballot-Selfie Ban | Wall Street Journal

Selfie culture, long debated in the court of public opinion, will make its debut in a federal court of appeals on Tuesday, when a panel of judges is set to appraise a New Hampshire law banning voters from sharing photos of their marked ballots on social media. The case before the First U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston pits longstanding policies favoring ballot secrecy—generally adopted in the U.S. in the 19th century to stanch then-rampant vote buying—against a form of smartphone-enabled expression popular with young voters. Since at least 1979 it has been illegal in New Hampshire for a voter to show his ballot to someone else with the intention of disclosing how he plans to vote. In 2014, state legislators amended the law to include a ban on “taking a digital image or photograph of his or her marked ballot and distributing or sharing the image via social media.” The aim of the law: to guard against hypothetical vote-buying schemes in which ballot selfies serve as proof of performance.

New Hampshire: Court to hear Libertarian Party appeal over New Hampshire law | Associated Press

A federal appeals court is set to hear arguments in a lawsuit by the Libertarian Party seeking to strike down a New Hampshire law that it argues could prevent third-party candidates from getting on the ballot. The Libertarian Party of New Hampshire is challenging a 2014 law that requires a third party seeking to gain access to the ballot through verified signatures to collect those signatures during the same year as the election. Judge Paul Barbadoro upheld the law last year, finding that it creates reasonable restrictions that are justified by the state’s interest in requiring parties to demonstrate a sufficient level of support. The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston is set to hear the Libertarian Party’s appeal Monday.

New Hampshire: Expert says electronic pollbooks for voters need more testing | New Hampshire Union Leader

An expert on the use of electronics for elections said to date, no electronic voter registration and checklist system “is ready for prime time.” Legislation allowing Manchester, Hooksett and Durham to use “electronic poll books” during the September primary and November general elections will be decided Thursday by the Senate. Tuesday Andrew Schwarzmann, head of the Computer Science and Engineering Department at the University of Connecticut and director of the Center for voting Technology Research said every poll book system his center has tested has faults that need to be addressed and are not ready for implementation.

New Hampshire: Republican party halts controversial vote meant to limit Trump’s delegate support | The Guardian

An attempt by the New Hampshire Republican party to limit Donald Trump’s influence in a potential contested convention was halted Monday, when the state chair canceled a controversial online vote for positions on crucial committees just minutes after the voting deadline. In an email obtained by the Guardian, party chair Jennifer Horn said that although all 23 of the state’s delegates to the Republican National Convention participated in the vote, she was canceling it “in the interest of full transparency”. Instead, she summoned a delegates-only meeting in Concord on Friday, in which those unable to attend could participate via conference call. Initially, in an email sent out Saturday night, the state party’s executive director proposed a slate for the eight slots on convention committees reserved for New Hampshire delegates at the Republican gathering in Cleveland in July. The proposed slate included two supporters apiece of John Kasich, Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz and one supporter of Marco Rubio. The eighth slot was left vacant.

New Hampshire: Electronic voter checklist proposal to go before Senate | New Hampshire Union Leader

A proposal to host a pilot program of an electronic voter checklist in three New Hampshire communities next fall, including Manchester, is the subject of a public hearing before a state Senate subcommittee later this week. A hearing on proposed amendment 2016-1514s — an act relative to reports of death of voters and authorizing an electronic poll book trial program — is scheduled for Wednesday, April 27 at 10 a.m. before the Senate Public and Municipal Affairs Committee in the Legislative Office Building, Room 102. The proposed amendment would be tacked on to HB 1534, relative to reports of death of voters. If approved by committee members, the amendment would go before the full Senate on May 5.

New Hampshire: House tackles voter eligibility bills | Associated Press

Tackling a handful of bills aimed at expanding or restrict voter eligibility, the New Hampshire House on Wednesday approved a 10-day residency requirement for new voters. The bill, which now goes to the Senate, would require voters to be domiciled in the state for 10 days before an election. It also would change the definition of domicile to exclude those who are in the state temporarily or don’t intend to make it their home.

New Hampshire: How New Hampshire Used the Wrong Math and Gave One of Rubio’s Delegates to Trump | The New York Times

After the polls closed in New Hampshire on Feb. 9, the Republican primary had a clear winner: Donald J. Trump. It took nearly two weeks for the state to award its 23 delegates, and in the end it gave Mr. Trump 11, John Kasich four, Ted Cruz and Jeb Bush three each and Marco Rubio two. But there’s a small problem: It looks as if New Hampshire gave Mr. Trump a delegate that actually belongs to Mr. Rubio. To understand how this works, it helps to know that there are no national rules in the Republican Party for awarding delegates. Each state makes up its own rules. In New Hampshire, the rules seem pretty straightforward. A candidate must get at least 10 percent of the vote to be eligible to win a delegate, a threshold cleared by both Mr. Trump (who earned 35.6 percent of the vote) and Mr. Rubio (who earned 10.6 percent). Then the candidates are awarded delegates in proportion to the total vote, with the statewide winner — in this case Mr. Trump — getting any delegates left unallocated.

New Hampshire: Bill would allow jailed felons to vote | Associated Press

Convicted felons behind bars in New Hampshire could get the right to vote under a proposal that is heading for a full vote by the House. If passed, the measure would put the state in the ranks of Vermont and Maine — the only two states where felons never lose their right to vote, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. But the bill, sponsored by four Democrats, faces an uphill battle after being deemed unworkable by the House Elections Law Committee on Thursday. The Department of Corrections took no position on the bill, but spokesman Jeff Lyons raised concerns about the impact on nearly 100 New Hampshire inmates incarcerated out of state and whether it would burden corrections staff. Currently, convicted felons in the Granite State are eligible to vote once released.

New Hampshire: State relies on a mix of new and old voting systems | Los Angeles Times

After Curtis Hines marked his paper ballot for Bernie Sanders on Tuesday, he brought it to the ballot box where his father, Patrick, cranked the handle to feed it in. “Ding!” The vote was counted. This was state-of-the-art technology – in 1892. But there’s no need for anything newer in this town of 198 people, the second smallest in New Hampshire. Its 127 registered voters are casting ballots in the same 12-by-16-inch wooden box that voters used in the Granite State’s first presidential primary 100 years ago. The controversy over so-called butterfly ballots in Florida during the disputed 2000 presidential election led to a major overhaul in voting equipment in many states, prompted by an infusion of federal dollars as part of the Help Americans Vote Act, or HAVA. Many of the new voting systems featured technology that officials thought would help restore confidence in elections at a critical point. New Hampshire, though, saw little need for wholesale change.

New Hampshire: Tablet-Based Ballot System for Blind Voters to Debut During Primary | New Hampshire Public Radio

Voting may be a right for everyone, but for those with vision impairment, casting a ballot privately can be a challenge. New Hampshire election officials are hoping to change that with the rollout of a new accessible voting system, called “one4all,” during Tuesday’s primary. “I believe we’re one of the first if not the first state to fully adapt tablet-based technology,” says David Morgan, president and CEO of the New Hampshire Association for the Blind. “It’s a tablet-based system, so there’s a keyboard. There’s a voice entry which is not enabled at this point. And there’s a tablet that is both a touch screen, a voice output, and an enter button so that you can listen to the candidates be scrolled. As you hear the candidate you want, you can press enter, or later on for the fall, enter a voice command.”

New Hampshire: Sanders rules New Hampshire midnight voting | The Washington Post

In sweaters, knit hats, gloves and mittens, they came. They came in service of democracy and freedom; they came to boost tourism and media attention to worked-over New England towns that have seen better days. They came to exercise their God-given constitutional right to vote for a presidential candidate and, in theory, to be the “first” in the nation to do so. They came of a dark, inevitably frozen January evening. And they came at midnight, braving the beasts that roam the Northern wilderness to make their marks on ballots — and leave their mark on history. The results of New Hampshire midnight voting are in — and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders (I) and Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) have won big, each taking two of three small Granite State districts that, combined, measured the opinions of 65 voters. Hillary Clinton and Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) each logged a victory as well. All told, Sanders won the support of 17 voters and Clinton, nine. On the Republican side, Cruz, Kasich and Donald Trump each had nine votes total. “We’re a pretty small town in an out of the way place in mountains, and live fairly quiet lives most of the time,” Mark Dindorf, a selectman from Hart’s Location, said in a telephone interview with The Washington Post shortly after midnight. “It’s interesting that we attract this degree of attention every four years.”

New Hampshire: Voters Try to Get Into the Picture | Al Jazeera

For those who hoped New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation primary would serve as a snapshot of the 2016 election cycle, Tuesday could prove a more literal reward than expected. The Granite State has a new voter ID law this year, and while those who arrive at the polls without the required forms of identification will still be allowed to cast a ballot, they must first sign an affidavit and also let a poll worker take their picture. Ballot-access advocates worry the process could lead to voter intimidation, as well as depress turnout due to longer lines at polling places. According to a Los Angeles Times column by Ari Berman, author of “Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America,” wait times “increased by 50 percent when the [New Hampshire] voter ID law was partially implemented, without the camera requirement, during the 2012 election.”

New Hampshire: ‘Voter-Shaming’ Mailer That Made Noise in Iowa Shows Up in New Hampshire | The New York Times

A controversial voter-turnout tactic employed by Senator Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign in Iowa is cropping up in New Hampshire, this time by way of a mysterious organization about which few public details are available. Voters in New Hampshire received envelopes in the mail this week claiming to contain “important taxpayer information,” according to Christopher Crawford, who received one of the mailers and posted pictures of it on Twitter. Mr. Crawford, who recently moved to Washington, was visiting his parents at their home in Nashua, N.H., this week when he opened an envelope addressed to him only to find a chart showing the names and voting history of several of his parents’ neighbors.

New Hampshire: The effort to save New Hampshire’s midnight vote | The Keene Sentinel

Each election cycle, political journalists make a late-night pilgrimage over icy roads to this Narnia-like region near the Canadian border, where the locals have a tradition of voting at midnight. When the clock strikes 12, a handful of voters traditionally gather at the Balsams Resort to cast ballots, giving them the bragging right of being the one of the first precincts to participate in the first-in-the-nation primary. The event is a celebration filled with food, drinks and live hook-ups for media trucks to broadcast the results around the world. (Not to mention the public relations boost for the resort.) And many presidential candidates historically made it a point to visit before the vote in hopes of securing the early-morning boost of winning the overnight vote. But last year, Dixville’s once-grand tradition appeared to be at risk. In 2011, the Balsams closed down, and employees who lost their jobs left the area. The remaining residents held a much smaller vote at the Balsams in 2012. This election cycle, only one candidate — Ohio Gov. John Kasich — has journeyed to these far northern reaches of the state.

New Hampshire: Clerks expect smooth sailing in first national election under fully-implemented voter ID law | The Keene Sentinel

City and town clerks expect smooth sailing — with maybe a rip current or two — Feb. 9 at the first national election since the full implementation of New Hampshire’s voter ID law. Larger municipalities, including Keene, are looking for volunteers to greet people at the polls to ensure they’re at the right ward and in the correct line — which is based on whether they have a legal form of photo ID and are registered to vote. The goal is efficiency, officials say. For towns, the national primary will mark the first time residents without an ID will have to fill out a voter affidavit and have their picture taken with a Polaroid camera. New Hampshire’s cities, including Keene, were primed during the municipal elections in November about the picture-taking component of the voter ID law enacted in 2012.