Non-Residents Shouldn’t Be Allowed to Vote in NH
A lot of discussion is being had about a number of voter registration bills before the Statehouse looking to address the domicile loophole and define who a resident of New Hampshire actually is when it comes to voting. While I don’t do a ton of Statehouse coverage at Patch, I do try to watch all that goes on.
As many of my past readers and listeners to my Boston radio program know, I have done a lot of work tracking vote fraud since the early 1990s. It’s one of my pet subjects (international trade is another) that I’m completely fascinated by. I’ve written about the subject in the past and done some investigative things around the issue.
Here’s what I can tell you flat out: Vote fraud does exist, it’s bipartisan, and it’s very easy to perpetrate, especially when there are lax registration laws (I’ll get into this more at a later date; I have to find all my previous research on the subject. As well, I want to stick to the residency issue in this post).
Since moving back to New Hampshire in the late spring 2003, and needing both an in-state driver’s license and utility bill showing proof of residency in order to register to vote, I have been stunned by the reactions I’m seeing from some — mostly Democrats and progressives — about voting issues.
Simply put: If you don’t live here and are not a resident, you should not be voting here, and I would feel this way regardless of the political outcome of elections.
It is way beyond time to close the domicile loophole and go back to a residency voting requirement, something that has always existed in New Hampshire, in order to ensure the integrity of the will of the residents of the state, not college and prep school students, or campaign workers who are all visitors and not residents.
I do not agree, however, with the elimination of the same-day voting provision – it should just be changed to require proof of residency to vote.
Here are a bunch reasons why I feel the way I do:
- Any vote of a non-resident cancels out a vote of a resident and many of our lower tier races – like state representative seats – are constantly being decided in recounts, by very few votes.
As an example of why this is important, let’s look a my city ward, Ward 5 in Concord. Many St. Paul’s School prep students are allowed to vote in my Ward and their votes potentially cancel out (depending on how they voted) the votes of residents (there were at least 10 lined up at the same-day registration table when I went to vote on Nov. 8).
Students who voted on Nov. 8, were 18, meaning they will graduate in May and go back home, where they live and reside, for the summer and then, probably, to prestigious universities. Yet, those of us who live in Ward 5 all have to live with their decisions for 20 months after they leave – while knowing before allowing them to vote that they will leave and go home. They aren’t going to stay in Concord.
I completely understand the desire for young people to vote but allowing prep school students to vote here when they don’t live here just doesn’t make any sense.
We all know that most of the students don’t live in Concord (and those that do live in New Hampshire can vote absentee, at home).
One can always tell where a Paulie actually lives when they get arrested – and it’s never Concord. As noted in previous Concord NH Patch arrest logs and stories – they live on Park Avenue in NYC, Los Altos, CA, Tunbridge, VT, Stonington, CT, etc. That is where the arrested students live according to the official record, that’s where they have their licenses, and that’s where they should be voting when they are at school (again, via absentee ballot).
Ward 5 is, admittedly, one of the most liberal Wards in the city. Ward 5 rep. races rarely come down to a recount (although they have come close in the past). The addition of Hopkinton into the district ensured that there won’t be recounts in the future – Democrats will always win. However, the decisions of the out-of-state St. Paul’s School student could potentially affect the outcome of any race because every election is a complete unknown. And that requires us — residents — to live with their voting decisions long after they leave.
- Out-of-state college students don’t qualify for in-state tuition rates because they aren’t residents – and yet, we let them vote and make decisions for who and how our state is run and who represents us in the Congress and the Senate.
This is mystifying. Seriously?
The argument has been made, in the past, that out-of-state college students pay taxes in New Hampshire if they go out to eat or property taxes, indirectly, in their rents, if they live off campus so, while not “residents,” they pay to support the communities and state they are going to school in so they should be allowed to vote here … but …
- New Hampshire residents who work in other states like Massachusetts don’t get to vote in the elections where they work (as noted in my exchange with the Clinton campaign worker, see below) – so why do we let out-of-state residents vote when they come to school here?
For nearly nine years, I lived in the Granite State and commuted to work in the Bay State at a newspaper company, with an office in Lexington. During that time, I paid Mass. state income taxes — filing a non-resident income tax form and barely getting any of my money back. That was the privilege of working in Mass. (when there was no work in my field here and what work there was paid less, even after commuting expenses). I also paid for gas taxes, sales taxes, meals taxes, and alcohol taxes – but was never allowed to and didn’t expect to be allowed to vote there despite spending all that money.
According to the 2010 U.S. Census, I was not alone: About 17 percent of New Hampshire workers told the Census they commuted out of state to work. That’s about 107,000 people. None of them are allowed to vote in the places they work.
If, when I was working in Mass., I demanded, “I want to vote here because you’re taxing me,” I’d be laughed out of every town clerk’s office in the state. In fact, the Bay State loves out-of-state workers from the Granite State (for similar reasons we love out-of-state college students) – they pay really high taxes and never use services like schools, rarely use police and fire services unless it’s an emergency, and only use the roads or Interstates, which are mostly federal. Bay State college students pay higher tuition – so come on in … just vote at home.
- This should also be the rule for out-of-state campaign workers …
I encountered a somewhat arrogant exchange back in the summer of 2015 when a Hillary Clinton New Hampshire primary campaign worker door-knocked my house. I rarely get doorknockers but when I do, I always inquire where they are from, if they are having fun, how important what they are doing is, etc., because we love our first-in-the-nation primary, as everyone knows, and it’s a great experience for young people to come up here and work and volunteer. It’s like no other experience.
But I also warn them – as I did with this young man – not to register to vote for the primary if they live out of state, despite what any campaign org says to them.
When I said this, the guy asked, almost defensively and, frankly, defiantly, “Why?”
You just told me you don’t live here – you live in Massachusetts, I said – so you should be voting there. If you vote here, your vote cancels out my vote — and I live here. I can’t just go down and vote in your state’s primaries because I want to or I work there.
The guy stated that when he was working in Iowa last year (2014), they didn’t have a problem with him voting – he just showed up, registered to vote, and voted.
OK, well, this is New Hampshire, not Iowa, you don’t live here, and you shouldn’t be voting here, I repeated. You live in Mass. – vote there. I added that as a young campaign worker, he also didn’t want to get caught up in the investigations of out-of-state campaign workers who crash here and then vote here when they shouldn’t be.
“Oh, you mean Ed Naile … yeah, we were warned about him …”
Do tell! Has the Clinton campaign spoken to you about being an out-of-state voter, I asked? Is the campaign telling you that you can vote here because they shouldn’t be? Mind you, he didn’t know I was a journalist but I was really curious now …
He got a little nervous and said, No, that they only talked about Naile and how he targeted campaign workers in the past.
Well, I wouldn’t vote here if I were you, I said. You don’t want to risk having your name out there and you’ll be cancelling out my vote.
At this point, he began to get feisty in my driveway, stating he had “the right” to vote in the New Hampshire primary and would be.
No, you don’t, dude.
I was simply astonished by this and at that point, being the weekend and not wanting to waste any more time, I offered him good luck and went back to my weekend.
I sat on all this for a bit and then, as the primary heated up, started thinking about it again from this perspective: Could the New Hampshire primary be stolen? In fact, it could, because there’s nothing to stop a campaign (or an outside interest) from hiring thousands of people for one or two days, putting them up in hotels, and having them register to vote same-day and voting in the primary, all hush-hush. It’s not unlike what this campaign worker was saying he was going to do (and later did).
With political activists hiring people for rent-a-riots at Donald Trump rallies for little more than a free phone and some cash, stealing the New Hampshire primary would be pretty easy, actually, if you had the money. In fact, I thought, why were Jeb Bush’s friends wasting all that SuperPAC money on ads when they could be lining up supporters with plane tickets, free meals, hotel rooms … say, $2,500 each … that would be 40,000 votes in the primary … he would have vaulted from the expected fourth place to second place and history might have been different.
Of course, it’s illegal to buy votes … but who would know? There’s nothing to stop anyone from doing this since we allow anyone to claim they live here and vote. SuperPACs pretty much do what they want without accountability and there is nothing to stop this theory from occurring.
I took the concept to Secretary of State Bill Gardner while working on another story and you should have seen his face — he turned white as a ghost. Yeah, I said, our beloved primary could be rigged with a few million dollars and there’s no way to stop it and he pretty much agreed.
On Jan. 27, 2016, I emailed all the campaign press people and asked if they were encouraging their staffers and volunteers to vote here even if they didn’t live here. I got some interesting answers, actually … John Kasich’s flack said, “We believe everyone should fully comply with the law and encourage everyone to do that.” Umm, ma’am, you didn’t answer the question … or, you did – fully complying with the law means your people could vote in the primary, hence the need to change the law … Ben Carson’s campaign emailed me a statement from the doctor saying it was “a shame” that candidates were trying to co-opt the primary with a “win at all costs” mentality and, No, his out-of-state staff would not be voting. Martin O’Malley’s guy spoke to me off-the-record on the phone. Clinton’s campaign never responded to the inquiries.
I later did a bit of research on the Clinton campaign worker, obtained his voting records – at his home in Mass., in Iowa, and as many other places he appeared to be working as he moved around the country. He was in Minnesota for the caucus, according to his social media accounts, so I don’t know whether or not he participated in that function. I also tracked his voting in Concord.
Presuming that all the orgs were giving me factual information on his voting records, it doesn’t appear as if he broke New Hampshire law – which is why I never did any news reporting on this issue but why we need to change the law. He may have violated federal law (see below). One has to wonder if he filed a tax return in Iowa – a state requirement for someone who works there more than six months, regardless of where they live (no, I didn’t report him to the Iowa DOR, c’mon).
- The argument of allowing out-of-state college students to vote in New Hampshire stemmed from a disenfranchisement lawsuit years ago but there actually isn’t any disenfranchisement – college students simply have to file an absentee ballot from their homes if they want to vote.
We can all argue whether or not we need to make this process easier – but the information is easily accessible online for anyone who wants to vote. Colleges should also be encouraging their students to vote wherever they live. However, there is no disenfranchisement and never has been. It’s nonsense.
Also …
- Federal election law is very clear on this as well – U.S. Code 52-10307, prohibited acts – which states that anyone who registers to vote and gives false information about their “name, address or period of residence in the voting district,” or conspires with anyone else to file a false registration, during federal elections – so 2014, 2016, but not 2015 city elections – is subject to up to $10K in fines and five years in prison.
Again, the key word is residence – they don’t live here; they shouldn’t be allowed to vote here. However, New Hampshire fails to enforce this law and it would appear that the federal government does, too. Out-of-state college students, too, may not be in compliance with their in-state laws — like access to financial aid or any tax breaks their parents receive from the state for saving for college ahead of time, as examples — if they register to vote out of state. Mass. believes that once you register to vote somewhere else, you are no longer a resident there. If anyone found out — and they do — there could be financial risk.
- New Hampshire also has a law the requires people who move here – again, resident – to have a driver’s license, if applicable for the privilege, within 60 days of moving here.
Again, if you’re a college student, you’re visiting, you’re not living here. Keep your other license. Vote at home.
The arguments about not making changes are, unfortunately, purely political.
Since the changes were made – as well as demographic changes, too, admittedly – New Hampshire has moved from a solid red state, with occasional support for non-socialist Democrats, to a purple to lean-blue state that just elected its first Republican governor in like forever, while electing Democrats who are “democratic socialists” and not JFK, LBJ, or even Mondale or Dukakis Democrats.
Anyone with a brain in their head knows this is mostly due to out-of-state college students who trend more liberal than conservative (or more liberal than the majority of New Hampshire residents) being allowed to affect our results.
Here is some data to eye …
In 2016, the town of Durham voted for Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump by a whopping 4,050 votes. In Keene, it was more than 4,100 votes. In Hanover, it was 6,561 to 926, a nearly 73 percent spread. In Plymouth, it was around 700 votes, and Henniker, a little less than 400 votes.
Clinton beat Trump by about 2,700 votes. And Maggie Hassan won the Senate seat over incumbent Republican Kelly Ayotte by 743 votes. Clearly, Ayotte lost her Senate seat due to college students being allowed to vote here. That is crystal clear (although, everyone agrees that illegal mailers driving votes to two indie candidates also helped her to lose).
According to the NH SOS, there were slightly more than 5,900 new voters registered on Election Day in New Hampshire using an out-of-state driver’s license. That’s just same-day election registration. Another 4,453 voters re-registered in the same town or ward after previously being removed due to the decennial purge or a 30 day letter (one has to wonder why they didn’t get the letter or didn’t respond). Another 32,000-plus were voters that had changed towns or city wards and re-registered on Election Day.
NHPR has some of the same-day voting data here showing that the new voters were mostly in college communities. Of the 5,900, 2,246, or more than 38 percent, were from Mass. Nearly 80 percent of the same-day out-of-state ID voters were from blue states. Only 3.15 percent were from Florida, a red state. Another 16-plus percent were from other states that weren’t listed in the graphic.
In Durham, it was nearly 900 voters with Mass. IDs. In Keene, it was 239. Plymouth had 179 while Goffstown — which borders St. Anselm — had 123. Hooksett had 95 (SNHU is nearby). Manchester had 92 (St. A’s again). Rindge — Franklin Pierce College — had 84. In Hanover (Dartmouth), there were only 68 same-day voters from Massachusetts while Nashua had 56. Henniker had 51. Every other community had less than 25.
It’s clear by voting trends and other information that the bulk of those new same-day voters probably helped Democrats win the Senate seat and probably Congressional seats, too.
Now, it’s important to note, that a good portion of the college students who are registered in their dorms are New Hampshire residents and would be voting in other communities. They should be allowed to vote at the dorm or at home. As well, with the 2,700 vote spread, it is unknown whether Trump would have won New Hampshire. However, many more — thousands and thousands — would not be voting, so it is a possibility.
It is the difference between winning and losing which is why Democrats spend so much time organizing in the college towns. There were countless — I know, I have the emails — events booked by the Clinton campaign in those communities, including visits by President Barack Obama, Chelsea Clinton, actresses and actors, etc., in an effort to get out the youth vote.
Back to the vote spreads: In 2012, they were similar: Obama beat Mitt Romney in Durham by more than 2,800 votes. In Keene, it was slightly less than 5,100 votes. In Hanover, it was more than 3,700 votes. In Plymouth, Obama won by 1,200 and in Henniker, he won by more than 500 votes. However, Obama beat Romney by nearly 40,000. It wasn’t even close — Mitt was smoked.
But now, compare the 2012 and 2016 to 2000, when there was no same-day voter registration, and thousands of people were not allowed to register to vote with out-of-state IDs or proof of residency.
In Durham, Al Gore beat George W. Bush by less than 1,800. In Plymouth, Gore won by 478 votes. In Keene, Gore won by 2,152. In Hanover, Gore won by more than 1,800. In Henniker, Gore won by 116 votes.
Juxtapose the 2000 spreads to 2016, based on lower college student voter registration, and, again, Trump probably would have won New Hampshire. The results of those thousands of votes being cast in Mass. or other states probably wouldn’t have altered the outcomes anywhere else.
Here are some of the voter turnout numbers comparing 2016 to 2000 from the five biggest college communities.
In Durham, nearly 4,100 more people voted in 2016 when compared to 2000, a 76 percent increase. Hanover saw about a 48 percent increase – more than 2,500 voters – while Henniker saw a 32 percent turnout increase – 640 voters. Keene saw an increase of 21 percent – 2,135 voters while Plymouth saw an increase of 47 percent (about 1,200 voters more than 2000).
How does anyone know these higher turnouts are based on college students? Well, none of these communities saw population growths of this magnitude.
Durham, as an example, according to the U.S. Census, had a population of 12,664 people in 2000 and 14,638 in 2010, an increase of 15.6 percent. The city of Keene had a population increase of 846 between 2000 and 2010, less than 4 percent. Compare that to more than 2,000 new registered voters. Hanover also had tiny growth – 3.8 percent – or 410 voters yet a whopping 2,500 more voters vote in Hanover now than compared to 2000. Henniker had a 9.1 percent population increase while Plymouth had an 18.6 percent – about 1,100 – new residents. Of course, not all the new residents counted in the Census are registered voters (the Census counts everyone; not just people who are 18 or citizens).
In other words, the data is kinda irrefutable – more college students and higher totals for Democrats … which is why Democrats want to preserve the current system and, in a sense, Republicans want to change the system back. The difference is logical though: Non-residents shouldn’t be allowed to vote here. Again, I would personally think the same way regardless of who wins the elections.
One last point, and I have also been saying this for years, too: If Bob Jones University or Liberty University or Gordon College or Brigham-Young University all – or one – decided to construct satellite colleges in New Hampshire and 3,000 to 5,000 new conservative, pro-life, whatever you want to call them students would be voting in a place like Concord, completely changing the voting dynamic in this community and the state to the point where Democrats would almost never win another statewide race or federal election ever again, you can bet your ass that progressive activists would be at the Statehouse filing bills to stop out-of-state college students from voting.
Ideally, none of this should be about politics, and I don’t look at it from this perspective either way. I think I’ve laid the case out pretty clearly. Only residents – not out-of-state college or prep school students or campaign workers – should be able to vote in New Hampshire.