At the request of many of us, Sen. Regina Birdsell has filed legislation that would amend the New Hampshire Constitution to ensure that only citizens of the United States and citizens of New Hampshire can vote in New Hampshire elections. This legislation, referred to as Constitutional Amendment Concurrent Resolution (CACR) 36, simply would have the following language put in the NH constitution in place of the present language that says state inhabitants vote in our elections:
“All elections are to be free, and every person who is a citizen of the United States and a citizen of the state of New Hampshire, and 18 years of age and upwards shall have an equal right to vote in any election. Every person shall be considered a citizen of the state of New Hampshire for the purposes of voting in town, ward, or unincorporated place where that person is domiciled and has primary residency.” CACR 36
Nine senators and Rep. Bob Lynn, who is a former NH Supreme Court Chief Justice, have joined Sen. Birdsell as co-sponsors of this constitutional amendment.
They recognize that our right to self-governance has been diluted over the years by the “election day tourists” who claim to be one-day New Hampshire inhabitants based on instant domiciles and come here from neighboring states suffering under virtual one-party rule. They claim their votes in those states are redundant, but here can “make a difference.” And too often, they do.
We need everyone helping us to get his constitutional amendment before the voters. This Monday, January 31, CACR 36 is being heard in the Senate Election Law and Municipal Affairs Committee. The hearing is being held at the State House (not the Legislative Office Building) at 1:00 pm.
We all know of elections that have been decided on slim margins. In history, we might remember the 1974 two-vote victory of Republican Louis Wyman over Democrat John Durkin that was eventually taken from him by a Democrat-controlled US Senate. More recently, in 1990 Democrat Robert Murphy defeated Republican Kathleen Souza by four votes for an NH Senate seat and in 2018 Lisa Beaudoin won her NH House seat over Gail Ober by two votes out of 21,440 votes cast.
Less dramatically, but perhaps more decisively, we might recall the 2016 presidential election 2736 vote margin in New Hampshire. Many of us working hard on that election certainly saw evidence of many more than that number of out-of-state voters coming to New Hampshire to deny Donald Trump his rightful victory.
We can gripe and we can commiserate with each other about the current lack of voting integrity that has residents of Massachusetts, Vermont, and elsewhere across the country coming to New Hampshire to dictate who shall be our elected officials and primary winners, or we can do something about it.
Attending the Senate hearing this upcoming Monday, testifying if you can, and at least signing in to support the CACR would be doing something about it.
Please confirm to me at my email address – WilliamLOBrien@gmail.com – that you will be attending and let me know if you will be testifying. I will be glad to keep a list and get the list over to Sen. Birdsell and the committee so they know what to expect.
Also, don’t hesitate to share this request and have those folks contact me.
If we are silent now about the solution to non-citizen voters to come along in years, we should not later complain about the problem of their diluting our votes.
I look forward to hearing from you,
Bill O’Brien