Round two of the “drive-by voting” battle in New Hampshire ended on September 16th, 2015 when the New Hampshire Senate failed to override Governor Maggie Hassan’s veto of Senate Bill 179. That proposal would have required potential voters to be domiciled in the state for at least thirty days prior to an election. This was the second initiative purportedly aimed at combatting this type of fraud, which can be illustrated by the actions of Vice-President Joe Biden’s niece. While “she didn’t break the letter of the law… many people think she violated the spirit of it” by voting in the 2012 elections in New Hampshire after only working on the campaign there for a short time.
The state’s previous law, SB 318, required anyone who wanted to register to vote to sign an affidavit affirming that they were a resident of New Hampshire. To vote in the state, however, an individual only needs to be “domiciled” there, which doesn’t mean being subject to New Hampshire’s residency laws. On May 15, 2015, the New Hampshire Supreme Court struck down the law after it was challenged by the American Civil Liberties Union of New Hampshire on behalf of the League of Women Voters and other individual voters. The Court ruled: “Because the challenged language is confusing and inaccurate, and because … it could cause an otherwise qualified voter not to register to vote in New Hampshire, we hold that, as a matter of law, the burden it imposes upon the fundamental right to vote is unreasonable.”
… What is more difficult to overlook is the clear division along party lines. The Republican dominated legislature passed SB 318 over the veto of Democratic Governor John Lynch shortly before losing control of the House in the 2012 elections. Republicans regained the House in 2014 and introduced SB 179 on January 8, 2015, but this time, they didn’t have the numbers to get the bill all the way through. With five fewer seats in the Senate, Republicans were unable to muster the required two-thirds majority to override another Democratic governor.
Full Article: Trying to Stop Drive-By-Voting in New Hampshire |.