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.
Because your right to vote is fundamental, and shouldn't be taken away just because you lost the paperwork.
Plus, non-citizens understand that trying to vote will ruin any chance they may have in the future of getting citizenship. People here illegally also don't want to call attention to their presence here and won't risk trying to vote based on that. Those people are not voting in any meaningful capacity.
The voter suppression thing is real, though . Click that link I left above; in certain states, there is a regular purging of the voter rolls, for frivolous reasons. Some voters don't find out they have been purged until they show up at the polls (after waiting in a long line to boot). Not giving them some way to cast a provisional ballot is the same as disenfranchising them.
... That doesn't even make sense. I'm convinced now that you have no clue what you are talking about.
This is about registration, not absentee ballots. If someone requests an absentee ballot, they are already registered. In many states, absentee ballots need to be requested on an individual basis, and if someone requests a ballot, they are going to take the time to fill it out and return it. In some states they can request a second if they changed their mind (or even go in and vote in person), but all ballots are tracked and only the last one is counted.
Nobody is going to give their absentee ballot away for someone else to fill out. And there are no piles of ballots waiting for ACORN to fill them out using names from the phone book.
You can’t have fair elections free from foreign interference if just anybody can fill out a ballot and claim they’re a US citizen on it
I guess it's a good thing that is already not even remotely how it works.
It is on absentee ballots. It's got a question on it that ask if you're a US citizen and you check yes or no, no proof needed
It is on absentee ballots. It's got a question on it that ask if you're a US citizen and you check yes or no, no proof needed
Citation Needed