On July 24, a New Hampshire Superior Court in Strafford County struck down language on the New Hampshire voter registration form that seems to say that no one should register to vote in the state unless he or she has also registered one’s automobile in New Hampshire. The plaintiffs include some college students, who desire to vote in New Hampshire while they are in college, but who don’t expect to live in New Hampshire after they graduate. They don’t register their car in New Hampshire because they have a more permanent home elsewhere (generally their parents’ home).
Guare v The State of New Hampshire, superior court, 219-20120cv-458. The ACLU handled this case. Here is a copy of the 10-page decision.
Kudos to the judicial system working how it’s supposed to, that doesn’t happen often enough these days. If Illinois had done something similar, I might not have been able to vote recently. I’ve been an Illinois resident for almost a decade, but I don’t own a car. Who’d have thought the specter of property requirements would reappear in this day and age?
Who? The Koch brothers and A.L.E.C., that’s who.
That’s true, that’s true. The Democratic Party Establishment’s efforts to pervert and dismantle democratic elections only seems to involve restricting voter choice (which is still an awful thing to do), but the Koch Bros and their allies go much further than that.
You misinterpreted what the court said.
There is a distinction in New Hampshire law between being a resident, and being a domiciliary.
Being a resident does not give you the right to vote in New Hampshire. But being a resident does require you to possess a New Hampshire driver’s license when you operate a vehicle in the state, and it also requires you to register any car that you own in New Hampshire.
Being a domiciliary does give you the right to vote.
If a college student (or his parents) owned a house in New Hampshire, they would be subject to property tax. And if they a renting their rent is paying the property tax for the owner. It wouldn’t matter if the student declared that they were intending to bug out in 3 years. New Hampshire would say, “that’s fine, but you are still subject to the property tax after you leave.”
If New Hampshire had an income tax, any income the student earned in the state would be taxed.
So logically, New Hampshire should change the condition for registering a vehicle to be where the vehicle is parked and operated most of the time.
What the court actually said is this (see page 6 of the pdf to which this post is linked):
“Simply put, a citizen must be a domiciliary and not necessarily a resident of New Hampshire to vote here.”
The court also states that an inhabitant or resident of NH is one who is domiciled in NH and has by all of his or her actions demonstrated an intent to remain an inhabitant of the state for the indefinite future. See page 5.
Therefore, the court has clearly defined residents of the state as a subset of domiciliaries of the state, and since the latter all have the right to vote in NH, so do the former.
So Jimbo is wrong again, which is no particular surprise. And all that claptrap about how cars should be registered and who will pay what taxes is a very typical effort by Mr. Riley to obfuscate the real issue here…that being the coordinated effort to selectively prevent or discourage voter registration using tactics which target a specific demographic – lower income – that is less likely to produce Republican voters than others.
When is your next A.L.E.C. meeting, JR? Are you bringing your golf clubs?
BS,
This that you wrote is not correct:
“The court also states that an inhabitant or resident of NH is one who is domiciled in NH and has by all of his or her actions demonstrated an intent to remain an inhabitant of the state for the indefinite future. See page 5.”
RSA 21:6 which is quoted on Page 5 is not part of the election code, but rather is part of the statutory construction for the entire statutes.
It does not say that one has to be domiciled in the state to be a resident. It says one has to be domiciled or maintain their principle abode in the state to be a resident.
A New Hamshire resident who is present in another state on a temporary basis, such as a student, or working on a long-term contract, or in the military, may retain their status as resident.
A Massachusetts resident may be domiciled in New Hampshire.
Resident is not a subset of domiciliary, and domiciliary is not a subset of resident. They do largely intersect with each other.
New Hampshire taxes the place where people rest their sleepy head, whether as tourist, resident, or domiciliary. It is reasonable that they tax the vehicle which is parked outside where they sleep, if it is for a majority of the year.
Just curious…are your posts “model posts” crafted by A.L.E.C.?