New Hampshire Republicans Try to Require Proof of Citizenship to Register to Vote
The bill, part of a nationwide wave of conservative proposals fueled by Donald Trump’s false allegations of voter fraud, risks disenfranchising many eligible voters.
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Look, I understand why this is happening. It's part of a concerted effort to make voting harder, and challenge the eligibility of certain classes of voters who tend to vote a certain way. But we do have eligibility requirements for voting, and the logical time to check them is when registering.
The real question is whether someone who has no documentation whatsoever should be disenfranchised. Like that homeless guy in the 59th Street subway station. He says he was born in Brooklyn in 1966. If that is true, and he is a citizen, he is eligible to vote whether or not he has a pristine copy of his long-form birth certificate. We need to have a system to accommodate him.
And understand what the end-game of Republicans are. They want to couple this with an aggressive purging of voter rolls. So they maliciously un-register people who they think will vote the wrong way, then impose these paperwork requirements on these people, all with the goal of discouraging them from voting.
So, while it may seem reasonable to demand proof while registering, that reasonable request is part of a larger goal of disenfranchising large groups of people.
Yeah, doesn't seem that the proposed bill offers meaningful improvements. The article says
Under current New Hampshire law, voters are asked to provide proof of identity and age (usually a driver’s license), proof that they live where they want to vote, and proof of citizenship (either a birth certificate or a passport) in order to be able to register and vote.
It's only if a person doesn't have a proof of citizenship, they can sign a sworn affidavit to register or vote, which will be checked by attorney general office after elections.
This looks to me as a solid system already. One cannot vote by impersonating someone else, one cannot vote if you are not living in the district, one can only lie about citizenship with a significant risk of that lie to be exposed after elections with all legal consequences.
Unless you belive that damn liberals moving buses of illegals with forged IDs to steal the elections, there is nothing much to be worried about.