Live Free - Don't Vote Absentee

Ever since Democrats started winning elections in 2006, the NH Republican Party has been spinning the myth of voter fraud, a myth that has increased in strength and shrillness with each passing year. On a national level, as the old school Republicans were replaced with rabid ideologues, the howls of voter fraud began echoing from sea to shining sea, despite a regrettable lack of evidence. 

This means that every year, around a dozen voter bills are filed by our Republican legislators. All of them are aimed at making voting more difficult and exclusionary. This year, HB 1264 is aimed at preventing student voting. The NHGOP has apparently decided that preventing college students from voting is easier than convincing them to join the GOP. After all, if gerrymandering can’t ensure a Republican majority, all that is left is to eliminate undesirable populations from voting.

The focus has been on disenfranchising the young for so long that we haven’t been paying attention to the latest targets:
the old. We’ve watched our Secretary of State refuse to allow towns to postpone town elections in the event of a serious storm, with the approval of the GOP. This year, the State House was shut down early for the safety of staff and legislators - because of snow - but Grandma was supposed drive to town hall to vote. The term “local control” has ceased to have any meaning in our state, where the majority party is working on a variety of levels to eliminate it.

We’ve heard, endlessly, about busloads of voters from Massachusetts. We haven’t heard anything about voter fraud by absentee ballot, but that hasn’t deterred the NH Senate. HB 527 is intended to “establish additional procedures for verification of absentee voters.” What are the existing procedures? And how do they fit those buses in an envelope? 

You may not be aware that our town clerks and moderators are expected to be handwriting experts, in analyzing the signatures on absentee ballot envelopes with the absentee ballots themselves. If a person with disabilities is being aided in filling out a ballot, the person who is assisting has to sign a number of forms to prove that they aren’t signing from the bus. As a result of this amateur handwriting analysis, hundreds of votes are discarded every election – without ever telling the person who has been disenfranchised that his or her ballot was shoved in the trash.

Some of these people are elderly voters who may have tremors, have Parkinson’s, or other health issues. Some may be people who have disabilities. This could easily happen to me. A side effect of back surgery in 2014 is some nerve damage in my right hand. My signature can vary from day to day, especially in cold weather.  I could very easily be one of those people whose ballots were tossed by the amateur graphologists.  

Voters are not informed that their penmanship was rejected. Days or even weeks after the election, their names are posted on a website no one knows about, then the website is scrubbed 90 days after the election. No effort has ever been made to inform voters that this website exists. Still, website or no, voters have no recourse – once their vote is discarded, it’s gone.

HB 527 is aimed at slightly modifying the signature practices that were enacted last year for mailed absentee ballots. If the voter has assistance, and the person who provides assistance signs an affidavit saying they witnessed and provided assistance, then the moderators and clerks will take their word for it. The unassisted will continue to take their chances with the local officials. In other words, if you have unreliable handwriting, you’d better get a responsible party to sign off on your absentee ballot, or else it may end up in the shredder.  That’s really something in a state with the motto: “live free or die.”

It’s a misdemeanor to vote absentee in NH without being entitled to do so. There have been zero prosecutions in the last decade. This whole signature verification business is a solution that lacked a problem. NH’s signature match law is the harshest in the nation (despite there being no evidence of voter fraud by absentee ballot). Courts have struck down similar laws in other states. ACLU NH is currently suing the state on behalf of some voters whose ballots were tossed in 2016. The NH signature match procedures are almost certainly a violation of the ADA. Another taxpayer funded lawsuit brought to you by the NHGOP. 

The Senate passed SB 527 by a voice vote, meaning there is no record of how your state senator voted on it. Be sure to ask him. The bill is now before the House Election Law Committee. Be sure to ask your state reps how they will be voting on continuing the disenfranchisement of elderly and disabled voters. 

PS: This remains unclaimed:

Published as an op-ed in the April 13, 2018 edition of the Conway Daily Sun newspaper

Fingers in Ears: LALALA

The NH House is currently dealing with the Senate’s casino bill, and the NH Senate is dealing with the House budget. These are the two Big Important things of this year’s legislative session. Last week, as part of the budget process, the Senate Finance Committee held a hearing in Representatives Hall so that lobbyists, organizations, and members of the public could make their case to the Committee for increased funding for their needs.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Morse was clear from the beginning that he would impose no time restrictions on those who came to speak. The hearing was supposed to last four hours, but went for an extra two, thanks to the no time limit policy.

People who have disabilities and rely on wheelchairs were there to speak about how much they need and value their personal care attendants, and how little these people are paid for the great work they do. A family with a deaf son was there to speak about his special needs. Other families spoke about their fears for their children with disabilities, and the possibility of being put on the infamous developmental disability wait list. This is all painful stuff, put out there in public, while members of the committee listen for hours with their eyes glazing over. It’s a process that is awful for everyone involved, a process that lacks any sort of kindness or compassion.

All that waiting made the two pieces of performance “art” enacted by members of the Free State Project that much more egregious. The hearing began at 3. At some point before the dinner break at 5 pm, a man calling himself “Adam Sutler” was called to speak, and delivered a theatrical and senseless rant. Adam Sutler was a character in the movie “V for Vendetta.” Much later in the evening, a second man calling himself “Edgar Friendly” was called to speak, and engaged in another theatrical rant, before Chairman Morse told him to get lost. His rant was a mash-up of lines from “Network” and “Demolition Man.” “Demolition Man” is where the character “Edgar Friendly” originated.

Apparently this was supposed to prove something grand and profound to the people of NH. What that was remains unclear. The FSP may have succeeded in pranking the committee (boy howdy, now there’s a triumph!) but it was at the expense of those folks sitting there with developmentally disabled children, folks sitting in wheelchairs, and every member of the public who was sitting there waiting to speak about their own needs or the needs of their family. The point they unwittingly made is that the Free State Project is largely comprised of narcissistic individuals who are incapable of consideration for those who live outside of their cult.

The GOP controlled Senate passed a rule change this year that enables them to avoid hearing any House resolutions that they wish to ignore. No longer do the dignified members of our Senate have to stick their fingers in their ears singing “la-la-la.”

There are 2 kinds of resolutions that can make it as far as the Senate: House Continuing Resolutions (HCRs) and House Joint Resolutions (HJRs). Most resolutions die on the House floor and never make it as far as the Senate – and for good reason.

In 2011, there were 27 HCRs and 4 HJRs. There was a resolution in support of the Arizona immigration law, one urging the UK to return the Elgin Marbles to Greece, and another urging the Park Service to exhume the remains of Meriwether Lewis to determine his cause of death. There was also a resolution that year to urge Congress to begin the process of overturning Citizen’s United, the Supreme Court decision that allows corporations to spend as much as they want to influence our elections.

In 2012, there were 16 HCRs and 4 HJRs. There was yet another resolution in support of the Arizona immigration law, one calling on the US to withdraw from the UN (thank you, Norm Tregenza), one urging the privatization of all aspects of Social Security, and my favorite, a resolution declaring brain power to be a state resource.

Most of those never made it as far as the Senate. This year, there were only 3 HCRs and 2 HJRs, which makes the Senate rule change all the more curious.

There are 2 HCRs and 1 HJR that made it out of the House. HCR 1 is a resolution urging Congress to fund a comprehensive health care delivery system to enhance specialty care for New Hampshire veterans. New Hampshire is the only state in the union that has no full service VA hospital.

HCR 2 is a resolution urging Congress to begin the process of overturning Citizens United. HJR 1 directs the joint legislative committee to acquire and display a portrait of legendary NH suffragist Marilla Marks Ricker.

Apparently these three items are all too coarse for the dainty ears of our NH Senators, since they refuse to hear them.  Not a one of them is a frivolous or ideological concern. Some Senators at least claim to be concerned about money influencing politics. Usually the GOP is the first to bang on the drum of veterans needs.  And given the big problem that today’s Republican Party has with women, you’d think the GOP men of the Senate would be out scouring the state for portraits of Marilla Ricker, or that multimillionaire Jeb Bradley would be paying for a portrait out of pocket, and unveiled at a big public event. (ha!) But, all kidding aside, celebrating a long dead woman who fought hard to secure voting rights for her gender can’t do anything but make these guys look good. And they won’t do it. They won’t even hear the resolution.

It’s a petty subversion of the democratic process. Each of those resolutions cleared the 400 member House to get to the Senate. That the Senate can’t be bothered to take the time to even hear those 3 resolutions is pathetic.

The Senate Finance Committee refused to limit the amount of time anyone could take to testify before them, resulting in a poorly run hearing that took hours longer than it should have, and inconvenienced hundreds of people who didn’t deserve to be treated so badly. That same Senate allowed the Free Staters to make a mockery of their hearing – but they refuse to hear 3 resolutions that reflect the will of the people of our state merely because it might inconvenience them.

  © 2013 sbruce

published in the May 17, 2013 edition of the Conway Daily Sun newspaper.