New Hampshire disenfranchisement push.

[Soontir C'boath]

Well then given most semesters begin in late August/September, it is pretty fucking moot. Jesus fucking christ on a pike.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Well then given most semesters begin in late August/September, it is pretty fucking moot. Jesus fucking christ on a pike.

Those need not be the ones right before the election. Just thirty days in the year. One can be a resident in multiple states, as I am in AZ and TX. I can technically vote in either state, but only one in any given election year--and that would be if I bothered to keep my address of residence in AZ (moms place) current.

The problem with this bill is not that it requires residency in the state. It is that it requires residency in the state prior to going to school there. A college student who finds an apartment his freshman year, or hell... a non-traditional student who works and owns a house while taking night courses, would be barred from voting for the entire time they attend university unless they were a resident before they started school. So, a teacher who comes to a state for a job, and enrolls in continuing education courses--unless there is an exception written in somewhere in the law--would ALSO be prohibited from voting.

[JME2]

One, I think it means the far right is getting desperate: the policymakers for that faction of American politics (those factions?) know perfectly well that demographics are against them and that the farther they push the country in the direction they want it to go, the more people are apt to resent being pushed there, because it stinks living in the Tea Party vision of America. Therefore, they have concluded that they need to "fix" America: perform plastic surgery on the country, as it were, to mutilate remake it in an image that will back their ambitions.

Two, I think it is a sign that the system is failing to adequately persuade anti-democracy elements in our society that threats to democracy itself (as distinct from disagreements over policy) will be quashed by peaceful means. This is not a good thing. It encourages fools and madmen on both sides to start looking towards violence as a way to solve all their problems in one go: string up a few politicoes from lamp posts, that'll fix things! Suuure.

This is an especially big problem because of the way it affects people who have an institutional inability to understand that a democratic society might, after free and fair discussion, not want to do what they want to do. Again, that can apply to fools and madmen on both sides.

A perfect summation.

Again, it's a sign of the times and this is likely not going to end well.

[Patrick Degan]

The problem with this bill is not that it requires residency in the state. It is that it requires residency in the state prior to going to school there. A college student who finds an apartment his freshman year, or hell... a non-traditional student who works and owns a house while taking night courses, would be barred from voting for the entire time they attend university unless they were a resident before they started school. So, a teacher who comes to a state for a job, and enrolls in continuing education courses--unless there is an exception written in somewhere in the law--would ALSO be prohibited from voting.

The other problem is that the wording is so broad that it could conceivably bar anyone who wasn't a native of the state but moved there and established permanent residency from ever being allowed to vote in New Hampshire elections. That reason alone is why this bill will go down in flames before any court in the land. That and it is singling out a specific class of persons for disqualification, which is another huge 14th Amendment no-no, as well as a 26th Amendment violation on top of it all.

Really, there is so much that's defective with this measure that it seems whoever drafted it must have gotten his legal education from Joe's Clam-Bar and Law Skool.