Democrats Oppose New Hampshire Law Requiring ‘College Students be Permanent Residents to Vote’
“Shaheen argues that the law effectively creates a ‘poll tax’ for college students.”
New Hampshire Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen is leading an effort to undo a new law which would prevent college students from voting in the state unless they are permanent residents.
Democrats obviously believe reversing this law would benefit them in the Granite State. Otherwise they wouldn’t be doing this.
Note how the headline of this story at The Hill by Jordain Carney calls the New Hampshire law “controversial.”
2020 Dems back repeal of controversial New Hampshire voting law
Democratic presidential hopefuls are lining up behind a push by Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) to oppose a New Hampshire law that would require college students be permanent residents to vote.
Shaheen sent a letter on Monday asking 2020 Democratic White House hopefuls to sign a petition opposing the law, which will go into effect in July. It requires out-of-state residents like college students to pay to obtain a state driver’s license and register their cars within 60 days of casting a ballot.
Several 2020 candidates quickly backed Shaheen’s effort to build opposition to the state law, which is being challenged in court, arguing it limits who can participate in the crucial early primary that will help shape the crowded Democratic field.
Many of the Democrats running in 2020 have jumped on this effort:
The New Hampshire voter suppression law is intended to disenfranchise college students from exercising their right to vote. I have signed @jeanneshaheen’s petition to oppose this law to send a clear message to students — your vote matters and must be protected.
— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) April 22, 2019
Students are the ones who will have to deal with the decisions lawmakers make for decades to come—protecting their right to vote is paramount. Thank you, @JeanneShaheen, for leading the fight in New Hampshire to protect student voters. I’m proud to support this fight. https://t.co/5TEdIGOZPo
— Cory Booker (@CoryBooker) April 22, 2019
Our democracy is strongest when voters have the freedom to head to the ballot box to make their voice heard. The efforts of @GovChrisSununu to restrict this right for tens of thousands of students is unconscionable. I strongly support efforts to amend and repeal this bill. https://t.co/STta0KDzPa
— Kirsten Gillibrand (@SenGillibrand) April 22, 2019
This law is wrong—plain and simple. We need a constitutional amendment that protects every American citizen’s right to vote and get that vote counted. Thank you, @JeanneShaheen for leading the fight. https://t.co/My1srb1DrY
— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) April 22, 2019
CNN has more on how the law works:
Currently, New Hampshire does not require registered voters to prove residency — only to prove “domicile.”
But the new state law, House Bill 1264, which goes into effect in July, puts the same legal requirements for residents onto “domicile” persons. Those from out-of-state living in New Hampshire, like college students, will have to pay fees to obtain a New Hampshire driver’s license and register their vehicles within 60 days of established residency, or after casting a ballot. The Granite State also allows same-day voter registration.
In her letter, which CNN obtained ahead of its publication, Shaheen argues that the law effectively creates a “poll tax” for college students.
“They are being disenfranchised by photo ID requirements, arbitrary challenges to residency, and unfounded allegations of fraud,” Shaheen writes.
This isn’t about standing up for the rights of college students. It’s about maximizing votes for Democrats.
Wouldn’t you respect them more if they just came out and admitted that?
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The only way they can get voters to vote twice and not get caught.
I thought New Hampshire voters got to decide what their election laws are and that choice has already made!
I’m not sure I see the issue unless they vote in their home state elections too. Then it’s a crime!
Oh, I see plenty wrong with allowing out of staters voting in a state they are merely visiting.
I saw this tactic during the Duke Lacrosse Hoax. Duke students, who were registered to vote in their HOME districts, were voting in Durham- AND ELECTED MIKE NIFONG!
I live in a mostly rural county with one sizeable town, with a university. Since sometime in the late 60s, early 70s, when college students were allowed to vote where they go to school, instead of their family homes, this county has been ruined. With many thousands of these leftist lamebrains voting, it’s become impossible for anything other than a Democrat to win any election, and they consistently vote for higher taxes that they will never pay. This sort of law is needed everywhere — a continuous stream of temporary residents (and overwhelmingly leftist ones) should not control the politics of places they have no intention of staying in. If they must vote (and they shouldn’t at 18, they don’t have enough experience, or sense), it should be in whatever location they call home, not where they go to school.
“I’m not sure I see the issue unless they vote in their home state elections too. Then it’s a crime!”
That’s exactly the problem. A person who is a legal resident of another state can easily request an absentee ballot from that state and vote there. If they are also allowed to vote in the state they are “domiciled” they can cast two votes.
Yes, it is illegal for them to do so, but how are they going to get caught? That would require actual enforcement of the voting laws…something that democrats fight vigorously to prevent.
NK voters are restricted in what election laws they make. For instance, they can’t deny people the vote because they’re behind in their taxes, or because they’re white, or female, or under 21. But they can certainly deny it to non-residents, even if it costs money to reside there.
Just heard that Bernie wants convicted felons to be able to vote while serving their sentences. The Dems must really be worried about 2020
And of course a prison with 1200 inmates will be found to cast 2000 votes for the Dem candidate.
In Florida the Socialist-Democrats are fighting against a bill in the legislature which would enact requirements for the restoration of voting rights to felons once they are released from prison. The voters approved the issue of restoration, now the legislature is moving to establish requirements for the restoration, essentially that ALL legally ordered Court and government costs, fines and restitution must be completed before the right to vote is restored. This would include paying all court costs ordered to be paid, paying ordered restitution to the aggrieved party (state or citizen[s]), etc.
The Socialist-Democrats complain that the released felons are poor and can’t afford to pay these amounts the Courts have ordered. I may be called a hard*ss, but if these amounts haven’t been paid, the debt to society can’t have been paid (literally and figuratively).
From there it’s just a short jump to letting illegals vote, because “their voice needs to be heard”.
The insanity of the left continues. Mind boggling that so many follow along.
No need to give the illegals an actual vote — they just need them counted in the census for apportioning Congressional districts and electoral votes.
In California and Texas, for sure, the illegals are infact doing both – being counted in the census and voting illegally. Probably also occurring in other places with high illegal populations. After all, why should they respect our voting laws since they’ve shown that they don’t respect our immigration laws.
Less so in Texas where we still are doing Voter ID pending a SCOTUS decision, which may be to not take up the case and thus allow the 5th Circuit decision (to allow use of the new law) to stand – or not. Not a perfect situation, but we don’t issue a Driver’s License to Illegal Aliens, so no automatic Motor Voter registration and no legal Driver’s License to use as proof in voting.
You can’t enter democrat national headquarters without a picture ID. I did a search on their building one time and the sign was front and center.
They have to be counted in the census. The constitution says so.
No it doesn’t, it doesn’t address illegals at all. Besides, the Constitution makes an exception for “Indians not taxed”, among others. The vast majority of illegals (from Mexico and Central America) are of Indian ancestry, cannot legally be hired and generally are paid under the table without taxes being withheld, and therefore could be argued to fit the exception. I’d love to see this argued before SCOTUS, win or lose. The rest of Amendment XIV, Section 2, also presents exceptions to inclusion in the count, and at least by implication, excludes illegals altogether, since it specifies exceptions for citizens who are not to be counted and it seems to me would require a lot of legal judo to argue that illegals should be counted when citizens are not (although I doubt that the founders considered illegal immigration a serious problem in their day and faced with anything like the current emergency would have been much more specific in their rejection of such a ridiculous interpretation of their work).
Not mentioning illegals is precisely why they cannot be excluded, because the census requirement predated the first American naturalization laws. Naturalization determined who was a voting citizen, not a resident.
Though the idea that the US is not sovereign enough to establish its own rules for who is a legal resident let alone a citizen repels me. No one argues with Brazil or Chile’s right to set such rules.
Yes, it does. It says “the whole number of persons”. Illegal immigrants are persons.
Yes
BS. There are no other exceptions.
More BS. Anything can be argued by a dishonest person, but this cannot be argued by an honest one. Illegal immigrants, no matter where they come from, are not Indians, and they are subject to US taxes, whether they pay them or not. Those illegal immigrants who cheat on their taxes are no different from US citizens who do the same; the constitution explicitly forbids restricting the franchise based on tax payments.
“Indians not taxed” were not subject to US jurisdiction; they didn’t have to pay taxes, or obey any other laws, and could not be sued in US courts. You certainly don’t want to argue that illegal immigrants have similar immunity!
No, it does not. It says “the whole number of persons in each state, excluding Indians not taxed” must be counted. Period.
It does no such thing. Either you’re reading some other constitution from an alternative universe, or you have serious problems with your English comprehension.
On the contrary, the entire concept of illegal immigration was alien to them, and they did not give Congress the authority to restrict immigration; if they’d known that it would one day do so they’d probably have explicitly forbidden it.
“”the entire concept of illegal immigration was alien to them,””
Yeah, that was my point. There wasn’t any such thing, which is the reason why they didn’t address it. They also didn’t address abortion or gay rights. Assuming what they meant in circumstances that didn’t exist is opinion, not fact – or law.
I notice those who agree with your argument always quote the first sentence and ignore the second. It does indeed indicate that some citizens can be excluded from the census and did not specify the conditions.
Of course those immigrants are Indians – and are identified as such in Spanish (“Indio”). Whether they’re “subject to the jurisdiction” is one of the unsettled points of debate in determining birthright citizenship, as you well know.
No, it does not. This is not subject to debate. You are either lying or incapable of comprehending simple English.
No, it is not. Only dishonest people pretend it is. They have to obey US law, they can be arrested if they break it, and they can be sued in US courts. And they pay taxes, to the same extent that anyone else does, i.e. as little as they can get away with. They pay sales taxes, real estate taxes, and most of them pay income and social security taxes that they will never get anything back from because they’re working on SSNs that are either fake or don’t belong to them.
It’s not insanity, it is hostility toward Americans. They don’t want Americans to have the power to reject their their policies and keep their friends and family away from the feeding trough.
Democrats believe you should be able to vote whenever you feel the urge. If you live in Massachusetts and are registered to vote there, you can vote there. However, if you cross the state line on election day and venture into RI or CT or NH or ME, and as a liberal you “feel” about the issues there, you should be able to vote. After all, liberal are so caring that laws should not apply to them. I am pretty sure that if I were a college student studying in France or Germany, they would turn me away at the polls (into jail) if I tried to vote there.
That look on Jeanne Shaheen’s face in the picture at the start of the article is enough to tell you she is trying to pull a fast one on the voters of New Hampshire.
I struggled to get past the very strong resemblance to Mitch McConnell; the smile is so deadly…
There is this thing called “absentee ballot” that allows you to still be able to vote from your home town no matter where you are.
Nice, if you can do it. Vote in New Hampshire, then vote in your home state. What else was motor voter created for?
The Democrats are not known as the ‘Evil Party’ for no reason at all.
All of these new “voter” blocks – 16 year olds, college students, felons – all have the same thing in common. They are generally captive populations that can be lined up at the polling station whether its for a grade or extra priviledges. It also gives them the power to swing representation and issues in local elections.
It isn’t just college students. The Democrats stole the Senate seat in 2016 by busing in “voters” from across the state line in VT.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/sep/7/voter-fraud-alert-over-5000-new-hampshire-presiden/
The U.S. Supreme Court upheld, in Symm v. U.S., the right of students to vote in the place where they attend college.
While Symm v US is almost always presented as a case which allowed students at Prairie View A&M university to vote, this is not the case. All Symm did was affirm the injunction against Waller County using a particular registration form when persons, unknown to Symm or his staff or not found on the county property tax roles, registered to vote. It did not affirm the “right” of the college students to vote in the county, only that the use separate forms was unconstitutional.
To understand exactly how this came about, one has to read United States v. State of Texas, 445 F. Supp. 1245 (S.D. Tex. 1978)and Whatley v. Clark, 482 F.2d 1230 (5th Cir. 1973), which are the controlling cases. These cases took issue with the statutory presumption of non-residency of college students and the use of a different registration form for that class of person. Whatley simply said that Symm had to stop using that particular form.
The commie is back to tell us commies must be allowed to vote as often and wherever they want.
No.
If you are not going to be around to live with the consequences of your vote, don’t vote.
There is no such thing as a “permanent” resident. People are free to move elsewhere if they want to, and most do move sooner or later. Students may declare themselves to be residents of the place where they go to school, but they will not be able to go back to their original state university and claim resident tuition there.
In most states, the forms for registering to vote include a declaration that the voter is now a resident of the place where s/he is registering to vote. Adult college students qualify to make this declaration. But most states also have laws requiring residents to start paying resident income taxes immediately, and to switch over their drivers’ licenses and car tags within a certain number of days.
New Hampshire is not creating a “poll tax,” but just declaring that all residents are to pay the same taxes. College students cannot avoid those taxes while they are legal residents of the state. Registering to vote establishes your legal residence.
Nobody is saying they can’t vote. They just have to do it in the state they are a resident of. I don’t want selfish, immature college kids who are only around for a couple years to change my state and local politics. Or voting in two states for that matter.
If you live in an area with a large prison population, like Walla Walla, WA, allowing prisoners to vote would be insane. Does anyone seriously think a prisoner should have a say in a 25 year local bond issue?
“Does anyone seriously think…”*
All the progs “think”* it is just dandy (as long as the votes are for them).
*Well, not sure thinking is the correct term for these people
Wait, let me see if I’ve got this right. New Hampshire is basically trying to prevent or limit outside influence in it’s state and local elections by those who presence in the state is usually temporary? What exactly is wrong with that, other than robbing Dems of an avenue for cheap votes?
Think there is already a ruling on this by the Supreme Court.
Can I just take a class online, run a traceroute to see how I’m connecting to the school, and then just vote absentee in all the states I pass through?
Huh? That’s exactly backwards. It’s precisely because visiting students won’t have to deal with the decisions lawmakers make for decades to come that they shouldn’t be allowed to vote for those lawmakers.
Even if it does, which is very dubious, what’s wrong with poll taxes? The constitution explicitly allows them. It just doesn’t allow linking the franchise to them, or to any other tax.
I am constantly amazed at how many otherwise educated people think a poll tax is a tax on voting, or has anything to do with voting. Just because once upon a time some states which had a poll tax decided to deny the franchise to black people who hadn’t paid it (but not to white people who also hadn’t paid it), doesn’t directly link the tax to voting. You might as well say that since some states deny drivers licenses to those who are behind on their child support, therefore child support is now a tax on driving.
A poll tax is exactly what its name says: a head tax, a flat tax levied on every person merely for existing.
Taxes in general have a bipartisan negative connotation in the center of the political spectrum.
Taxes for existing are also wildly unpopular.
Why should services from which everyone benefits equally not be paid for by everyone equally?
Students who are paying out of state tuition are by definition citizens of another state’s election district. Only citizens of a state should vote in that state.
Even when they don’t vote in two jurisdictions, Socialist-Democrats do try to take advantage of any possibility of voting where they do not permanently reside.
A couple or three years ago there was a newspaper article about a NY City (Manhattan IIRC) resident who had registered to vote in the location of her summer cottage upstate. Her logic was sound, she stated that in the upstate rural area her vote as a Socialist-Democrat voter could actually make a difference in the outcome of an election while in Manhattan her vote really doesn’t count because of the millions of Socialist-Democrat voters who make the vast majority of voters in the City. Apparently NY state had no problem with her registering and voting where she does not permanently reside. No big surprise for a state run by Socialist-Democrats. Might have a different outcome if it were a case of a Republican registering elsewhere.
Vermonters wish we too had that law on the books,as if we had there would be No El Burnmeister that was elected to congress,the senate.The nation wouldn’t have to endure his probable run for the presidency and the utter destruction of the nation if elected.
Perhaps NH should be doing more to eliminate the same day registration and voting which enables MA Socialist-Democrats to vote in NH and be back home in MA with lots of time to wait before watching the election returns.
Thanks to SDN for the link to the Washington Times article on stealing 2016 elections in NH. It is so worth reading that I’ll repost the link:
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/sep/7/voter-fraud-alert-over-5000-new-hampshire-presiden/
You vote your residence – end of story. There are many professions in which people work in multiple states: construction, theater arts, music, environmental sciences, safety inspections, etc. etc. These professions have to keep track of what they worked and where, and are subject to State income taxes for the states in which they worked.
But they only have one voting residence.
This kind of issue – working vs. tax residence vs. physical presence – is wide-spread and long-standing. I suspect that there are already laws on the books about this. But by introducing another law, it becomes a neat PR stunt. And that’s all that this is.
I hope they are ready to accept that all these new residents must be given in state tuition going forward since the state is acknowledging they are in fact in state residents.