September 16, 2025 • 51 mins
Grab your passport! We're traveling to...your town clerk's office.
New Hampshire *loves* elections, but does it love helping eligible voters get registered to vote?
In this episode, Liz talks to McKenzie Taylor, the State Director of the New Hampshire Campaign for Voting Rights, about registering in person, voting in person, requesting to vote absentee in person...yet, they are able to have this conversation from inside a computer. Science!
Remember: you are eligible to vote in New Hampshire if (1) you are a US citizen, (2) you will be 18 years or older on or before Election Day, and (3) New Hampshire is your home.
New episodes on Tuesdays, which also happens to be the day elections take place...
Become a monthly supporter of the show --> this helps Liz continue to make episodes!
Links:
- New Hampshire Campaign for Voting Rights
- Check your voter registration (NH Secretary of State)
- Find your polling location (NH Secretary of State)
- Find your town or city clerk's information (NH Secretary of State)
- NH’s new ID requirements send some would-be voters home to grab passports, birth certificates (NHPR)
- Former Republican Rep. Troy Merner pleads guilty to wrongful voting, loses right to vote (NH Bulletin)
- NH disability rights advocates raise alarm over bills tightening voting requirements (NHPR)
- Federal judge hears arguments over NH's proof of citizenship voting law (NHPR)
- Sununu signs strict voter ID bill; law will take effect after November election (NH Bulletin)
- Ayotte signs bills to tighten absentee voting, ensure accessible voting (NH Bulletin)
Podcast theme music by Transistor.fm. Learn how to start a podcast here.
New Hampshire Has Issues is generously sponsored by Seacoast Soils, an organic compost and topsoil provider for New Hampshire, Maine, and Northeast Massachusetts. Visit their website at www.seacoastsoil.com!
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_00 (00:00):
People who are voting absentee have to attest,
like, I can't be there inperson.
Right.
So they can try to call them andsay, hey, you forgot your
signature.
But, like, they're probably outof town.
They said, I can't come inperson.
So there's not a chance if youmake a mistake to cure your
ballot, as we say, because it'sall in the same time frame.
And sometimes people are so, theelection officials are so busy
(00:22):
because the polls are so packed.
Like, they don't have time untilin the morning.
It becomes the end of the day.
They're like, oh, now we got todo the absentee ballots after
the election.
the end of this whole day whenit was something like we could
have reopened the envelopeschecked off the list made sure
that everyone who the ballots wehave we can count because they
have all the proper things thismakes me very sad this is very
(00:46):
frustrating experience ofelection law and your podcast
really and you've signed up toget a lot of bad news so All
right, welcome to New HampshireHas Issues, the podcast that
(01:09):
dares to ask, are we first inthe nation for how accessible it
is to vote?
That's a good one.
Thank you.
The podcast that dares to ask,do you have your birth
certificate with you right now?
No.
No.
Sorry, Liz.
Excellent tagline, Mackenzie.
(01:29):
Well done.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I didn't think about that onefor a while.
I bet.
That's such a good one.
I have a passport regularlyavailable, but I don't bring it
with me.
I'm not on the move with mypassport.
You don't carry it around withyou all the time.
I don't.
I have my driver's license withme at all times-ish, but not my
passport and definitely not mybirth certificate.
Your tagline is fantastic.
(01:49):
Do you have your birthcertificate on you right now?
I don't.
Now it's somewhere in my house.
It's somewhere in here, but Iwould have to find it.
I am your I'm your host, LizCanada, and joining me today is
the director of New HampshireCampaign for Voting Rights,
Mackenzie Taylor.
Hi, Mackenzie.
Thank you for being here.
Wow.
Thanks for having me, Liz.
I'm excited.
I am so thrilled that you arehere because, yes, voting is
(02:12):
important, and yes, folks havesaid democracy is crumbling, but
truly, a few of the previousguests that I've had, when I ask
them at the end of our timetogether, I say, like, what's
something people can do?
A lot of them in their list havesaid, You have to go and vote.
So it's like, you know who Ineed is Mackenzie to come tell
me, what is it like to go votein New Hampshire?
(02:33):
So I'm hoping you could teach mesome things today.
Happy to do that andunfortunately share some tough
news.
This podcast is full of toughnews.
It's full of issues.
It's right in the title.
It's the whole premise of thisshow.
Indeed, indeed.
I thought we would start with asimple question.
Maybe it's a little bit morecomplicated than some of my
other simple questions.
(02:54):
But I used to live in Colorado.
I lived there for not quite 10years.
So I voted there a few times.
When I voted there, we would getour ballots in the mail.
We would get that.
I don't even remember how far inadvance, but we'd get in the
mail and we would get somethingin the mail that was like this
little booklet of everythingthat was on our ballot.
And it would have like this sideof the issue and this side of
the issue.
I lived in Colorado the yearthat Colorado passed marijuana
(03:18):
legalization.
And so in the booklet would belike, here are the reasons
people support legalizingmarijuana.
Here are the reasons peopleoppose.
it.
But it was like an unbiased,like both sides of the issue so
that as you went through yourballot, you could be like, okay,
let me read about it.
Let me do this.
And then when you finished yourballot, you could, you know,
sign it, put it together anddrop it off in a ballot box, or
(03:39):
could just go on election dayinstead of sending in your
ballot and vote in person.
So with that long preamble of mytime in Colorado and voting, how
many of those things can I do inNew Hampshire?
So many options in Colorado.
And Colorado famously is likeone of the states we use as kind
of an example of access.
(04:00):
So it is a good comparison toNew Hampshire.
All right.
So how are we doing in NewHampshire?
You can do very few of thosethings in New Hampshire.
Some of the way to explain this,I think, is like a little
history lesson to go back to1993.
I'm 11 years old, thriving.
Yes, yes.
I was born.
So it was a big year for me andvoter registration.
(04:20):
Too soon, Mackenzie.
Cut.
Cut the whole episode.
Cut it here.
Painful.
Never mind.
That's fine.
It's fine.
The National Voter RegistrationAct passed in 1993 and had all
of these provisions that includethe voter registration form that
most states use.
You can fill out in person.
You could fill it out with aperson from a nonprofit at your
(04:41):
door, at an event.
You can mail it in.
And you could also register atthe DMV.
So when you're getting yourlicense, interacting with them,
you could also register to vote.
There is an exception to theNVRA.
The bill said the only statesthat don't have to do this is if
you have a same day, like onelection day, voter registration
continuously.
If you can register on electionday, you don't have to do all
(05:04):
these things.
So New Hampshire, being who weare, said, great, we're going to
do that.
We don't want to work with thefederal government.
That's a lot of work.
It might be a lot of money.
So we're just going to pass sameday registration.
So they passed election dayregistration, which is great.
Very, really great.
We're, for that reason, exemptfrom the National Voter
Registration Act.
(05:24):
Although same day registrationis great they kind of said okay
great we're done that's itmission accomplished roll the
banner out election dayregistration is really important
because in a lot of states thatare nvra states you have to
register by a certain time rightand then if you're not sorry
like we'll see you next timelike you didn't register in time
(05:44):
colorado is a good examplebecause i believe in colorado
you can register ahead of timeyou can register online you can
register at the dmv and you canalso if you skip all of those
things you like miss everysingle one you can register in
person on election day.
That sounds pretty good.
We can do both.
So it's not if you do same-dayregistration, same-day voter
(06:05):
registration on election day,then you're not allowed to do
these other things.
That's not the case.
Other states have done both ofthem.
We can have it all.
Yes.
And also you talk about votingvia mail, mailing ballots, early
vote.
We don't have those things hereeither.
I think about 80% of peopleregister to vote in New
Hampshire on election day.
And most Most people, also avast majority, vote on election
(06:30):
day, not by absentee ballot.
There is an absentee process ifyou're out of town.
If you have a disability, thelaw was expanded a little bit to
count in that absence to clarifythat if you are working.
So if I'm a firefighter whoworks 12-hour shifts, I might
still be in Manchester, but I'mworking the entire time the
polls are open.
So those folks can voteabsentee.
(06:52):
If you have child carerequirements or you care for
another adult and you aren'table to go to the polls, those
people can also vote absentee.
And if there's a snowstorm ontown meeting day, there's a
special little provision thatthe Monday before, if it's going
to be an emergency, you can govote absentee in person because
(07:13):
you don't want to travel in thestorm.
So those folks can voteabsentee.
Assuming that the storm is notalso happening on the Monday
before?
Well, if it's happening theMonday before, you got to make a
choice.
If it's a two-day storm.
Hope that big, huge snowstormisn't today.
Right.
Okay.
Because I think it was two orthree years.
I think it was at least two in arow that there were big storms
(07:33):
on town meeting day in March.
Oh, I remember.
And everyone said, can wepostpone?
So they added that provision in.
But it's a pretty small list.
And the Constitution in NewHampshire says absence and
disability are the reasons.
So those are guaranteed.
And we have made sure that we'reincluding the other things
there.
We could expand it and haveeveryone have the option to vote
(07:55):
absentee.
Right.
We have not done that.
So it is a pretty small group ofpeople who can vote by absentee
ballot.
And if not, you got to vote onelection day.
And you could go to your town orcity clerk's office and register
to vote before election day.
Or you can register on electionday.
There's not an online option.
There's not an option with avolunteer organization.
(08:17):
It's limited.
I can't go on the old internetand say, I would like to
register to vote in NewHampshire.
I can't do that.
You cannot.
You can, if you Google that,it'd probably take you to the
Secretary of State's website andit would say, here's how you do
it.
You go to your town or you go onelection day.
So can I print a form out andmail it in?
No.
You actually don't even, theform is not even on the website.
(08:39):
Can't find it.
Not available.
It's kind of a secret.
So it's like a treasure hunt.
If you want to vote, X marks thespot and the X is your town
clerk's office.
We have somehow decided, andagain, this decision was made in
the 90s.
It has changed.
We have changed a little bit.
Like we are talking viacomputer.
It's...
We are inside the computer rightnow.
We're in the computer.
So kind of the process was like,it's got to be in person.
(09:02):
You got to register with anelection official in person,
face to face.
And that's a nice process, Iguess, but it really limits the
access.
And we're talking about, I livein Manchester, so my city
clerk's office is open regularbusiness hours.
I think they're open late onTuesdays.
They're open a little bit laterinto the evening.
If I lived in Shelburne.
(09:23):
Shelburne, yeah.
Or Errol.
There or not.
many towns where I know theyare.
In most, I don't know thoseclerks hours by heart, but a lot
of smaller places, the townclerk might be open one day or
two days a week.
Some of them are open, you know,for a couple hours on the second
Saturday of the month.
So because it's one kind ofperson, you know, it's a very
small town.
(09:43):
Right.
And that's what they need forlike their town business.
But it does mean that there are,if you're, if you can't register
on election day and you got togo to your town clerk's office,
you got to like put it on thecalendar, get time off make sure
you don't have a conflictbecause there's not a large list
of options of how to get thereand even with like a small town
(10:05):
that has a you know a part-timetown clerk who's maybe there two
days a week or whatever it mightbe another organization like in
other states other organizationscan sometimes register people at
you know big community eventsthey will have like come
register to vote here we can'tdo that in new hampshire either
no not allowed the only peoplewho can register people to vote
(10:26):
are election officials folks whoare working at the polls on
election day sometimes peopleget deputized by the election
officials but you can't havelike a voter registration drive
here where a bunch of volunteersgo out and say let's make sure
people have updated theirregistration that is not allowed
oh so so it makes it a littlebit harder makes it a little
challenging to register hereokay so if i am new to new
(10:49):
hampshire as i once was notsuper long ago and i want to
register on election day i'vemissed everything the the
election is here.
I want to go vote.
What do I need to do to be ableto register to vote on election
day?
A couple years ago, let's, let'ssay it's 2022.
You would just bring yourself,you would bring your ID.
(11:10):
And if you didn't have the ID,wasn't erupted your address, you
know, you hadn't yet, maybe ithad your old address on it,
maybe had an old name on it, butyou could still, you would go to
the polls and you'd give thatinformation.
Anything that wasn't on thatproof of ID, if you didn't have
it with you, you could sign, youwould have test yes I am Liz
Canada I live here here's myaddress this is the party I
(11:30):
choose if you choose one andthen sign and say under severe
penalty of voter fraud I test Iam 18 years old I'm a U.S.
citizen I'm domiciled so likelive basically is a fancy word
for live in the place that I sayI do bring down my address and
you are who you say you are I'mme Liz Canada hello 18 or older
(11:52):
U.S.
citizen domiciled live in NewHampshire and I really am me.
Yes.
And I would have to sign a legalform that's like, I am not
lying.
And if I am lying, I'm in bigtrouble.
That very elusive voterregistration form that's very
hard to find has that on it.
You're signing all of that.
If you didn't have, for example,proof of address, you'd have to
(12:12):
sign something else.
They would send something toyou.
So there's a lot of checks inthere.
But at the end of the day, ifyou were a qualified voter, you
could go, you'd make sure youfill out the form and then be
registered to vote, cast yourballot.
Now, in the year 2020, or notbelieving people's attesting on
their signature anymore.
So you got to go with you.
Who's the we in that sentence?
(12:33):
Because I feel like we, you andme, probably believe people if
they say I am signing a legaldocument under threat of voter
fraud and being a big trouble.
Like I would believe thosepeople, right?
The legislature in 2024 and thenthe governor decided that we
needed, everyone needed physicalproof of everything to go in you
(12:55):
got to prove your identity soyou got to have something that
has your photo on it so yourphoto ID right could be state ID
still at this point in time youcan use like a military ID a
student ID something that's likea government ID official has
your name your photo so you cansee as you are and an expiration
date like we know that it'srecently updated yeah proof of
(13:17):
your age so that could be onyour license it could be if you
don't have your license like abirth certificate or a passport
and So something that shows youridentity, your age, your
domicile, your address.
So again, a license could dothis.
A rental agreement, a lease, amortgage, an official bill, like
(13:38):
an electric bill.
Those things can prove that.
And then the final one, which isthe most unique to New
Hampshire, is your proof ofcitizenship.
So this can only be proved withthree things.
Your birth certificate, yourpassport, which not everyone has
either.
Not everyone has.
And then if you are anaturalized citizen
naturalization papers.
So for me, I was born in NewHampshire, one of the few, and
(14:01):
my birth certificate would showthat I was a U.S.
citizen because it's from theUnited States and my passport.
If you're someone who'snaturalized and you have an
international birth certificate,it's going to be your passport
or your naturalization papers.
I don't know about other people.
I don't carry my passport orbirth certificate in my back
pocket or around with me.
(14:21):
It's in a safe place.
Or it's being sent off to berenewed.
Right.
Right.
Right now.
So that is the thing.
Most people might carry aroundtheir ID, their license.
College ID.
Right.
College ID.
Yeah.
Something with their picture onit.
I know.
I used to have my college ID onone of those lanyards.
You'd come in with your lanyard.
Do the college students still dothat, or is that just in the
(14:42):
year 2000?
Yikes.
I was in college.
You would have a lanyard, butyou better not wear it around
your neck.
That's what you do for freshmanorientation.
A spinning on.
Yes.
Right, right, right.
But then you outgrow it withintwo weeks.
Right.
Yeah.
lanyard with the ID on it.
Yeah, I hear that.
It would be a good way, though,to make sure everyone has their
proof of ID when they go tovote.
You can vote.
Everyone's got their lanyard.
That's right.
(15:04):
So that last piece was new lastyear, or went into effect the
end of mid-November of lastyear.
There's some states that youneed proof of citizenship for
voting in the state elections,but those states also might have
other ways to register.
We're pretty unique in thatyou've got to register in
person, either on election dayor with your clerk's office, and
(15:25):
you better have your documentaryproof of citizenship with you in
order to do it.
So if you went in, you were new,and you were like, I've got my
ID, it has my address, it has myage, it has my name, I probably
showed my passport or birthcertificate in order to get
this.
Is that enough?
They would say, no, we don'thave proof of citizenship.
Go home, get it, and come back.
(15:46):
Holy smokes.
So if it's October, and somehowI've missed all of the election
conversations, which it feelsreally hard to do in New
Hampshire to miss all theelection conversations.
It would be kind of nice.
I think maybe people'salgorithms do that for them,
where they just don't see thestuff.
But if it's October, my friendis like, hey, you got to
(16:07):
register to vote.
Are you going to do that?
And I don't have my birthcertificate and I don't have a
passport.
What option do I have to vote inNovember?
I mean, you could see how toexpedite a passport.
That's expensive, Mackenzie.
Yeah, I mean, the passportitself is also expensive as I
recently have learned about the$130 plus mailing plus the
(16:31):
photos process.
I mean, you have to find proofsomehow.
You have to try to figure outhow to get those things
expedited, but it takes a while,right?
It's like, it's notinstantaneous.
If you are someone who's reallylucky that you missed this, but
you live in New Hampshire,right?
It might be quicker for you toget a birth certificate because
you're able to go to the town orthe state and that's an easier
(16:52):
process.
But if you were born inCalifornia California is quite
far away.
I don't know what the process isthere.
Or any other state.
Any other state.
Literally any other state.
It's not going to be as quick asdriving down the block and
getting it.
You know what?
I did this test, actually.
So I was born in New Jersey.
I'm going to whisper it.
I was born in New Jersey.
(17:13):
I don't have my birthcertificate.
I'm sure I had it at some point.
I was born.
And I have moved to differentstates and, you know, in all the
moves, boxes, boxes, boxes.
I don't know where it is.
So I ordered it in the springbecause I I'm like someday I'm
gonna need sooner or latersooner or later I'm gonna need
this birth certificate so Iordered it and to order it from
(17:33):
New Jersey it took me like twominutes like it was very easy to
order remotely to order onlinebut then it took me like seven
weeks to get it yeah that's thethat's one of one of the issues
is it's not right away andfamously not everyone who lives
in New Hampshire was born in NewHampshire what many legislators
(17:55):
are only now finding outbreaking news not everyone was
born here yes their personaltown clerk doesn't have their
birth certificate oh my god andthat's one of the problems I am
in the process of changing myname on my passport it's kind of
the last of a long list ofthings yeah and you do have to
(18:17):
send the full thing in the fullthe full passport and my
marriage certificate in the mailThe original documents have to
go in the mail.
Yes.
When you do that, you don't haveit with you.
And I don't know how long thatwill take.
Right.
Yeah.
(18:38):
And then it's gone and you donot have that document until it
is returned to you.
I mean, I'm hoping that theyquickly send it back because it
feels a little high pressure.
But yeah, I'm currently goingthrough that process.
And so there's no appeal.
It's not like I can show up onelection day and be like, no,
no, I ordered it.
I promised Right.
Correct.
As of the law right now, that'show it is.
(19:03):
And we saw this.
That's a lot of yikes rightthere, Mackenzie.
That's a lot of yikes.
When did this take effect?
Because we had a huge electionin 2024.
Did it affect people then?
I think they knew it was goingto be a big deal because I think
it went into effect November11th or so, about a week after
(19:23):
the election.
I see.
So as soon as people, you know,if they were proactive in going
to their clerk's office, it wasin effect right then.
Again, most people register orupdate their registration on
election day.
So we saw in town elections.
Yeah, in Exeter, we vote inMarch for our town elections.
So that's something we just didin March.
(19:45):
Yep.
So we had some observers, likenonpartisan observers,
volunteers who went to the pollsto kind of watch and say, like,
how is this going to work.
Are people going to know?
For town meeting, townelections, you have pretty
engaged voters, folks who aregoing to...
You are pretty dang engaged ifyou're going to town elections.
Big shout out to everybody whois at their town election voting
(20:09):
on zoning amendments.
Cheers to all of you.
The school funding, the schoolfunding, buying a new fire
station.
I mean, important things.
Yes, absolutely.
But it's not quite apresidential election turnout.
Which is actually kind of wildbecause the impact you can have
on your town.
Count elections is sosignificant, but that's for
another day, perhaps.
(20:30):
So we had some observers,nonpartisan observers there just
watching, hey, is this, arepeople going to be turned away?
Do people have their stuff?
Are people registering?
Like, what is the deal?
And we were blown away by thenumber of people who the calls
we were getting from observerssaying we've had, oh, one person
turned away, two turned away.
There's been 10 people trying tovote and three got turned away.
(20:53):
So we thought it was gonna be abig deal.
We weren't sure how many peoplewho are voting in these really
small elections wereregistering.
SPEAKER_01 (21:00):
We
SPEAKER_00 (21:00):
found out it was a lot.
I believe the total number is121 people that we have heard of
across the town elections andspecial election that happened
so far this year who went toeither register or vote and
didn't have all of the proofneeded and were turned away.
And that's not any of the citiesyet.
(21:21):
No, that's not any of thecities.
It's not Manchester.
It's not Nashua.
Whoa.
So that was a really highnumber.
And I will caveat that some ofthose folks might have come back
and voted.
And like, that's great.
They were motivated enough to doso.
Dig through the boxes, find thatpassport.
Haven't traveled in six years.
Got to find it.
(21:41):
Go back home.
Didn't know it was a law.
Came back.
But we basically between havingfolks at the polls saying, oh,
OK, you got turned away andtrying to talk to people, asking
the election officials and thendoing some follow up to the
election officials and saying,hey, we know you had an
election, do you remember howmany people were turned away?
That was the number that we gotof that many people were
(22:02):
impacted.
So we are once again going totry to watch this and get a
sense of it during the cityelections.
We want people to not be turnedaway, to know ahead of time, but
we think it's really importantto understand with this new law,
what is the impact?
Because it's very new, it's verydifferent, and there's not other
(22:23):
states that have the identicalprocess to us.
Can I just, I'm just going toask the question, Mackenzie, is
this like a touch, like a smidgeof voter suppression?
A little bit?
I don't like using big words,but I feel voter suppression.
This feels like a lot ofbarriers.
(22:44):
Like you got to jump through alot of hoops and there's no sort
of like fail safe.
Like if none of these thingshappen, but you still are
someone who should be able tovote that day, it doesn't seem
like there's a backup.
Absolutely.
Because we're seeing people who,again, they're eligible to vote.
They meet all the categories.
We heard of folks who came inwith their military ID to
(23:06):
register and that was notenough.
And they were turned awaybecause they didn't have their
birth certificate or theirpassport.
Folks are eligible and they arebeing turned away and restricted
from voting solely because oflack of documents.
Not because they don't meet thecriteria laid out in the
Constitution.
solely because they either don'thave like someone who doesn't
(23:29):
have their birth certificatedoesn't have a passport or there
was a woman a voter who waswilling to tell her story who
came in to vote wanted to voteon the school she had her young
kids with her yeah and shedidn't know about this new law
she was like oh I'm gonnaregister I'm gonna vote new to
town sure and she didn't haveher passport or birth
certificate so she was turnedaway and then it was like the
(23:49):
day got away from her she hadher kids until she was running
errands and she wasn't able tocome back it is a lot of work to
parent.
End of sentence.
Right.
So that mom came in with herkids, couldn't register to vote.
The day got away from her.
And what happened?
And she just didn't, she didn'tregister and she wasn't able to
cast her ballot.
She showed up to vote for theschools her kids go to.
(24:09):
Yes.
And she was turned away.
Right.
Unbelievable.
Believable, but unbelievable.
There is an extra piece herethat I neglected to mention that
for many of us who have changedour last names because of
marriage or any other reasons.
Oh my God.
Your birth certificate does notmatch.
I was not born Taylor.
It didn't predict your future?
(24:31):
It wasn't like, we're prettysure that Mackenzie's going to
meet somebody.
So your birth certificatedoesn't have your married name.
And it doesn't change.
I was born as St.
Germain.
Right.
So for those people, or peoplewho have gotten divorced and
changed their name, peoplechange their name for all sorts
of reasons.
That doesn't match their birthcertificate.
(24:53):
But marriage is a big one.
That's a big one.
And typically, dare I say,typically women are the ones.
It does seem to be mostly womenwho change their name when they
get married.
So this law might affect womenmore.
So they have to bring a specialfifth document, potentially, to
(25:17):
be able to show that that personon their birth certificate, the
baby on the birth certificate,was indeed them.
There was a lot of very, very,very frustrating discussion
about this, obviously, when itwas going through the
legislature.
One of my favorite things thatthey said, it's not only those
three documents that provecitizenship.
There could be other ways, likesomeone who was there when you
(25:38):
were born.
It was unclear what else wouldbe the document.
So could you bring in the doctorwho was there at your birth?
Would that be enough?
It might depend on the electionofficial if they felt like that
was enough.
I honestly feel like they wouldbe like, well, do we have proof?
proof that you're who you sayyou are let's see your medical
degrees if my mom goes in andshe has her proof of citizenship
(26:02):
and then it's like a russiandoll like right and we have a
photo so there was a lot of nono no this is not that hard but
there's not there's not thatmany documents and it's really
easy to say it's not that hardif you're someone who lives in
breeze this and has lived in newhampshire your whole life and
has your birth certificate andhas never changed your name just
it's some people some peopleit's not a lot it's not everyone
(26:23):
folks who've changed theirnames, which in just many
instances, women who get marriedand take their spouse's names,
they are going to be impacted bythis if they try to register to
vote.
What about if they're registeredto vote and then they move to
another town?
Does that impact them or arethey fine because they just
moved?
So what the law says is that ifyou move from one place to
(26:47):
another, you need to show thatidentity again.
So proof of ID, you always haveto show proof of ID, even if
you're registered to just goingin to vote they have to make
sure you are who you say you arenow you are supposed to only
have to show id and proof ofaddress domicile i moved here's
my new address here's my newlease my new mortgage whatnot
sure id although a lot of peoplemove and you don't change your
(27:09):
address on your license becauseit's a pain they give you that
paper one that no one acceptsyep but you gotta show your your
new address you're not supposedto have to show citizenship
again because you're alreadyregistered right if they can
look it up in the database tosee you're already registered.
Right.
But a theme.
I'm worried about where thissentence is going.
(27:30):
So if you go and register maybeat City Hall, they have some
time.
They might probably have theability in the system to, oh, I
can look it up.
I can see.
There's only a few people, acouple of people in each town at
most, really, who have access tothat statewide database.
And most people who areregistering you to vote at the
polling places don't have thataccess.
(27:50):
Even if they did have access, aton of polling places in New
Hampshire don't have Wi-Fi.
Oh, my God.
You're like, can you justconnect to my hotspot so I can
vote, please?
It's like the statewidedatabase.
They don't just give out accessto everyone because it's
everyone's information.
It's a very serious database.
(28:10):
But we've made this law whereit's like, oh, well, if you can
just check and see they're inthere, you're good.
But the actual process ofchecking to see that they're in
there, that they're alreadyregistered is much easier said
than done.
So we did see, again, on-townmeeting there were some people
where they were like well wecan't look you up to know that
it's you so we would ratherthey're the election if they're
(28:31):
kind of on the hook so our stateis requiring people to go in
person on election day topolling locations that in some
cases do not have wi-fi to lookup if they are already
registered to vote and thenyou're stuck if you don't have
those documents somewhere elsecorrect do i dare say again that
it might be voter suppression itcould it could be The other
(28:54):
piece here is that sometimespeople get removed from the
voter rolls.
The person I was registeringnext to when I went to change my
name during the election lastyear in November was standing in
a very long line to update myregistration, update my new last
name on my registration with mymarriage certificate in hand.
He thought he was registered.
He went, he went all the way inline.
(29:16):
This is like 6am.
He went all the way up to thefront to check in and they said,
we don't have you on here.
Oh my
SPEAKER_01 (29:22):
God.
SPEAKER_00 (29:22):
So then they sent him back.
Back to the end of theregistration line where he ended
up next to me.
No.
So this happens where if youdon't vote frequently, which is
a lot of people don't votefrequently.
Yeah.
You got removed from the voterrolls.
If the last time you voted wasfor either Barack Obama or John
McCain.
You probably got, they said, notactive.
(29:43):
Not active.
They removed you.
So there's people who didn't,who they thought they, you know,
this person might've said, well,I voted in 2012.
Like I thought I was still onthere or maybe he voted in 20...
For one reason or another, hewas removed.
He wasn't aware he was removed.
And for those people, again,you're probably going to the
polls with your ID, but youprobably are not like, oh, just
(30:07):
in case I'll bring my birthcertificate.
The core to a lot of thisproblem, I mean, there's a lot
of problems here, right?
It's a self-inflicted.
A lot of issues, do we dare say?
Yes.
Self-inflicted issues.
But is that we do almosteverything on election day.
Like if our elections in NewHampshire are like a house of
cards, it's like all built onlike this one election day card.
(30:30):
So when things don't go well onelection day, if you wait, you
worked, you're like, I'm goingto go after work.
My polls close at seven.
I'm going to get there at 545.
And then you don't havesomething with you.
Like we don't have a lot of roomfor error.
We don't have a lot of room for,you know, it's just like this
really high pressure day, whichis why the town meeting
(30:51):
snowstorms, those kind of thingsare such a big deal.
deal because we don't reallyspread out the vote at all.
We register probably on electionday and you vote on election day
and when something goes wrong onelection day that's it.
Like you're kind of out of luck.
Why?
That's terrible.
Why are we doing this Mackenzie?
Because New Hampshire got sameday registration we said that's
it.
Oh no.
We love election day so much wewant to do 100% of the stuff on
(31:14):
it.
Doesn't this put a lot ofpressure on the election
officials who are like theretrying to help people?
It does indeed.
Yes.
And a lot of other states likethings are run at the county
level and they might have like alot of professional staff i mean
most in most places there'sthey're not not a lot of states
where there's like oh we have somany professional staff you know
(31:34):
a lot of people areunderappreciated understaffed
totally but things are run at amuch larger level like a county
level in new hampshireeverything's at the town level
and all of the electionofficials are town by town
running their elections town bytown city by city and then
normally the poll workers whohelp kind of run things on
election day make sure they'reat the polling place those folks
are volunteers they're oftenstipended stipended award I get
(31:57):
stipend sure let's go with ityeah they just put skibbity in
the dictionary we can saystipended that's fine so they're
running things on election daythey're up really early they're
there until late in the eveningso it's it's run by you know
mostly volunteers who are doingthis because they want to like
serve their community they wantto help with the elections and
when there's long lines like wesaw a lot of people voted in the
(32:19):
2024 presidential electionpeople waited an hour two hours
hours plus to register and thenvote in some of these bigger
towns wasn't like oh we've got abunch of people back at the
office we can bring it like thepeople you have it's who's there
they're responsible forexecuting the election day and
it's kind of like it is againit's like most of the
registration happens you havepeople who register most of the
(32:41):
voting happens there and thenthe other thing that's a little
wonky but so for the people whodo vote absentee and we've got
more absentee restrictions so iguess we can talk about those
too yeah the people who do voteabsentee they cast their
absentee ballot they're sealedin their envelopes and then they
stay until election day and thenthey get opened on election day
so again like we're not openingany envelopes until election day
(33:01):
we're opening all up we got todo it all at once yes something
we did during covid in the 2020election was we let the election
officials not open the ballotsbut just open up the outside
envelope to make sure okay yepliz canada yep they signed their
name it's completed the ballotlike this is a submitted ballot
(33:21):
and then say okay we we have ourabsentee ballot in from Liz
Canada.
They returned their ballot.
And going through, so they werelike opening them, they were
checking.
And if someone, for example,forgot to sign it, someone could
call them and say, hey, they'vegot your ballot down here.
You actually need to sign it forit to count.
And that person can go, oh mygosh, I forgot.
I'm going to go sign it.
I want my ballot to count.
I will go do it.
I want my ballot to count.
(33:42):
I went through the wholeabsentee voting process.
I've done all those things.
It's not easy.
I registered.
That was happening earlier in alot of places because so many
people were voting absentee.
It saved a lot of time.
And then on election day, Theyalready said, oh, we know who
this person is.
Great.
Their ballot is in.
They've voted on the checklist.
Run their ballot through.
We stopped doing that.
It was a one-time only thingbecause New Hampshire election
(34:03):
day happens on election day.
So now, in addition to most ofthe people registering on
election day, most people votingon election day, we're also
doing all of that processing onelection day.
You mentioned that there areother restrictions on absentee
voting.
Hot off the presses.
New restrictions coming in hot.
Let's hear them.
So in order to vote absentee,you've got to have a reason.
It's a pretty short list ofreasons like I am not going to
(34:25):
be here I cannot get to thepolls yeah and you sign you have
to already be registered becauseif you weren't registered
there's like a really difficultmail process that I won't even
get into because very few peopleuse it because it's like
everything else a littleunwieldy so you're registered
and the way it has always beenyou fill out the form you sign
it again I attest you have tocheck the box like I have a
(34:45):
disability I'm going to be outof town I have child care it's
Monday in Tobarosa snowstorm allthe options on there and you
sign it and you attest like II'm going to be out of town.
I am who I say I am.
Your clerk gets it.
They mail you the ballot.
You fill out your ballot.
You put it in a confusing set ofenvelopes, which is why the
inner envelope, you have to putyour name, you sign it, and then
that ballot would count,presumably, now that you did
(35:07):
everything else.
But we have once again alsodecided, we, the legislature.
Not you and me.
Right.
Not we.
New Hampshire legislators havedecided that that process also
wasn't hard enough for them.
A majority of legislators, notall of them.
They weren't like, this is, weunanimously believe this.
This is a great idea.
A majority of legislators said,what if you also had to prove
(35:28):
your ID for this too?
So now in order to request anabsentee ballot, you need to do
one of three things.
Otherwise, you're not gettingyour ballot.
They're not going to send it toyou.
You need to include a copy ofyour ID.
Most people mail in the form.
So I guess now you can take apicture in your phone.
But then you have to print it.
(35:53):
able to email it it is a littleunclear it doesn't say you can
it doesn't say you can't itmight depend on your clerk so
maybe you can email it in againthis is we will see yep if you
can't do that you can you canget it notarized a much easier
process oh a notary yeah andwe're also talking about people
like a lot of people who willvote absentee they might not
(36:14):
have transportation like theyhave disabilities they're not oh
i'm just gonna while i'm runningmy day full of errands i might
as well swing by the bank andget my thing notarized So if you
don't have a copy of your IDenclosed, you can have it
notarized and then that is okay.
Or you can go in person.
We love the face-to-facecontact.
Or you can go in person andrequest your ballot there and
(36:36):
show them your physical IDbecause then they can go, okay,
yep, you are, you're going tosay you are, and then they'll
give you a ballot.
They want people to go in personso much.
Is it that they want friends andrelationships and community?
Like, is it just like they wantto talk?
Because we can solve thatwithout voter suppression.
We can find a way to get peopleto talk to one another.
So that is now, so as ofSeptember 30th.
(36:59):
September 30th, 2025, because Idon't know when this will be
published.
So as of September 30th, 2025.
In order, when you send in yourabsentee ballot request, you
have to do one of those things.
Copy of ID, notary, go inperson.
So how much voter fraud ingeneral have we seen in New
(37:19):
Hampshire?
Because there must be someexplanation for why our
lawmakers are spending theirprecious time passing laws to
make it more difficult to vote.
So what are they stopping?
There's, you know, there's notmuch.
Not much, like how much?
(37:40):
This I think will be the onlymention probably ever of the
Heritage Foundation on yourpodcast.
Ooh, shout out.
They have a tool on theirwebsite where they...
track cases of voter fraud.
Okay.
And you would think, oh my gosh,they have this tracker.
It must be so many.
It must be so many.
Yeah.
What does the tracker tell us?
So this is from 1982 to 2025.
(38:03):
The entire existence of my life,1982, 2025.
Yes.
27.
It's not zero.
People who committed fraud andthen they were caught and then
we have them in this databasebecause they were prosecuted and
they can't vote anymore.
27 is less than the entirenumber of people turned away on
town meeting days in NewHampshire.
This spring this past spring innew hampshire for the new law we
(38:26):
have and again town meeting daysdoes not include the cities like
manchester nashua keen omg wowwow wow wow a lot of these cases
a lot of being like there's 27overall so like a lot a few of
them are people who voted twicewhich again illegal should not
do that don't vote twice nothingthat we're passing addresses
(38:49):
that issue they had a house inmassachusetts and they had a
house in New Hampshire and theyvoted both places.
You can't do that.
That's illegal.
There is a system called ERIC.
It's a multi-state network.
And basically it compares thevoter files of the different
states, so the voter rolls.
And it has all the information,you know, it has the name, the
age, the address.
So that system, a lot of statesare in our neighbors in
(39:12):
Massachusetts, Vermont, Maine, Ibelieve are all in it, compares
the list.
Then if someone is registeredtwice, they go, alert everyone,
someone's registered twice.
And again, this is like, there'svery few people that this has
happened, but if we're reallyserious about cracking down on
cases like these 27.
In New Hampshire over the courseof 43 years.
In New Hampshire since 1982.
(39:32):
It would be choosing being partof a system that can see, oh,
this person's registered in bothplaces.
Because some people, they movefrom one place to another.
They just need to be, you know,they're not trying to vote
twice.
They just need to be taken off.
But if you do try to vote twice,you know, this type of system
would catch it and would makesure, you know, New Hampshire
and Massachusetts is going tonotice like, hey, this person's
on both the year rolls.
That bill has been filed.
(39:52):
to join that system quite anumber of times and and we're
super passing it the legislaturehas said no we don't we don't
like this at all we said wedon't want to give our data to
anyone else the other thing thatEric requires states to do they
don't like are they afraid it'sa man named Eric are they afraid
that all of this information isgoing to a guy named Eric the
(40:14):
one guy I mean there are someconspiracies about obviously of
course there are of course thereare there's no reason behind it
but of course there are somepeople in the legislature or
have opposed this have said theydon't like that being part of
ERIC, a member state, requiresthe state to send a postcard to
everyone who is not registeredbut is eligible saying, this is
(40:34):
how you would register.
Shocking.
Wait, wait, wait.
Let me talk that.
I think my brain turned off,right?
This is totally reasonable.
So they don't like Mr.
ERIC because it would require orit would allow, require or
allow?
Require the state.
Require the state.
the state to send a littlepostcard that says...
(40:55):
A one-time postcard.
A one-time postcard in the mailto say you are not registered.
Here is how you can register.
Correct.
They are a post...
That is...
They're like, we want you tofind out by going in person.
Yes.
We want you to learn the bignews by going in person.
Sorry, if we were to hiresomeone who would just stand in
the town square and do it, maybethat would be better because it
(41:15):
would be an in-personinteraction.
So those have been a lot of thepushback.
But it just, it illuminates tome that this is not It's a lot
about preventing voter fraud,because if it was, we have
systems that would address thevery few types of cases there
(41:46):
are.
so that they can vote.
I can't wrap my head around it.
I can't.
And I'm also thinking of collegestudents who are here, and this
is their home.
This is where they live.
And I imagine that quite a fewof them don't have passports
(42:06):
yet, and they haven't moved tocollege with their birth
certificate.
Why would they go to collegewith their birth certificate?
I was not.
You're packing up for college.
You're leaving home for thefirst time.
Hey, take your most valuabledocument that's very difficult
to replace.
You're going to need it whenyou're in freshman English.
They don't have those documents.
(42:27):
A couple of the bills that arecoming up next year specifically
are focused on removing studentIDs from the ability, from like
those approved documents.
So making it harder for collegestudents.
So, you know, we're like, inorder to vote, you have to have
your identity, you got to haveyour citizenship.
You have to make sure you havesomething, your ID shows your
(42:49):
name, your, you know, photo,like we know who you say, like
the purpose is to who are youand are you here in front of us
like is that your name right butnow you know if they want to
pass these things it's like ohbut not that way we don't like
that document one of the bills Ithink it allows private school
and like charter school IDs butnot college IDs so the
(43:10):
University of New Hampshire agovernment institution would not
be applicable but private schooldown the street would be
Phillips Exeter your ID willwork Plymouth State University
will not No.
It's great.
But those are state.
I mean, that to me, it seemspretty clear that it is.
(43:31):
It's like we don't want collegestudents to vote.
But it's like the purpose of thelaw.
If you're saying if you're ifwe're taking out your word, you
want to make sure that everyonewe see their photo so it knows
it's your name.
But we also don't want to acceptgovernment IDs from the state
universities.
Is it solving a problem or is itvoter suppression?
It's not solving a problem.
It's not solving a problem.
(43:52):
Maybe it's not.
It's a secret third thing.
Elections are coming up again incities.
They are.
We had town elections in thespring.
City elections are in the fall.
So what do we need to know,Mackenzie?
I don't live in a city.
You do.
Some other folks do.
People should, if they are in acity or you know anyone in a
city.
If someone you love is in acity.
Make sure they know about howyou need to register to vote,
(44:15):
like these new requirements.
Take them.
Pick them up and drive them tothe city clerk's office.
One of the benefits of being ina city is you're town or your
city clerk's office is I didn'treally speak for Manchester but
I have to assume open more thanone day a week fingers crossed
which is great moreopportunities to register ahead
of time because I don't thinkespecially based on the town
meeting experience that peopleunderstand what is required and
(44:38):
what was passed in the new lawand like that is really really
important also I think this is Imean this is just generally my
advice is like be a poll workeroh sign up to work at the polls
what does it mean to be a pollworker so there's a number of
different jobs including somepeople who like help with that
registration process people whotell people where to go right
(44:59):
you gotta like this is where youenter oh if you need to register
you go this way folks who helppeople check in yeah people who
you know they'll give youthey'll take your little chip
and give you your ballotcounting ballots at the end of
the night or like helping withthat process at the end of the
night helping people make surethey put the ballots in the
machine and they go in themachine there's a lot of jobs
that exist at the polling placeand again like these are our
(45:20):
elections are run by volunteersbasically Basically, that's a
great way to be involved and tomake sure that, again, because
we have so much pressure onelection day, more hands to be
able to make sure we don't havelong lines and people have
assistance.
And having people who wantpeople to be able to vote is a
benefit at the polls.
That's being an American, right?
Like, don't we care about that?
(45:42):
Am I wrong?
Have I not understood what ourcountry is about?
The reviews of being a pollworker and being there and
getting to see the experience ofpeople cast in their votes
citizens registering for thefirst time and being part of the
process like there are suchglowing reviews really about the
experience and if you want tolike do something that will make
(46:04):
you feel good and like you havehelped and if this episode is
really depressing to you butalso you're like I want to see
this work in real time yes youcan make it you can make an
impact we normally need pollworkers basically everywhere
every single election and I havevolunteered at our polls by
being one of the people whogives out a stick That feels
(46:24):
like one of the most rewardingjobs.
Yes, it is the best job becauseit's literally people are just
so happy to get a sticker.
And if they bring their kids,their kids get a sticker.
So a listener who is as takenaback as I am, if you are
someone who lives in a city oryou know people who live in a
city, make sure that they knowabout these changes because we
(46:47):
want everyone to vote.
Everyone who is eligible tovote, we want them to vote.
And that might mean that theyneed to go get their passports
or birth certificate now.
Right.
They got to start finding itnow.
Because the election is comingin those cities.
And if you live in a town, youdon't need to wait.
You can do all of this now aswell because elections are
coming back around in the springfor your town, your school
(47:10):
district.
Those things are happening inthe spring too.
And be a poll worker.
Sign up to be a poll worker.
And I would say also contactyour legislators because
they're, again, deciding to domore.
Maybe meet with them in person.
They're super interesting.
into meeting in person so whynot set up a meeting in person
the third Saturday of the monthfrom 10 to 12 and talk to them
about like we don't we don'twant this we want to be able to
(47:35):
vote and cast our ballots fairlyand to not have people turned
away from participating becauseagain not long ago just last
year it was if you didn't havethese documents you would sign a
legal form saying I am the Thisperson, these are all true.
And if I am not telling you thetruth, I am in huge legal
(47:57):
trouble.
Yep.
And they took that option away.
The state lawmakers who votedfor this took that away.
And the governor signed it andsaid that was okay.
Signed it.
Okay.
Mackenzie, thank you so much forinfuriating me so very much in
such a short amount of time.
We didn't even get to talk aboutwhat we would do to be better.
Oh my God.
We have to have a follow-up.
We need a follow-up of like,maybe after the city elections,
(48:19):
maybe that would be a good timeto come back and be like, how
did it go?
How How do we stop doing 100% ofour stuff on one day?
There's a song from Dreamgirls,One Night Only.
This is my musical theaterreference.
That's like the theme ofElection Day in New Hampshire in
voting rights.
Wow.
I can't believe that this is athing that happens.
So big party on Election Day.
(48:40):
Bring your passport and yourbirth
SPEAKER_01 (48:42):
certificate.
UNKNOWN (48:47):
Yes.
SPEAKER_00 (48:52):
He got a lot of shout outs on the homeless
episode, too, because he's sosmart.
Compete on who gets more listenson our episodes.
It'll probably be housing.
It'll probably be housing?
I think so.
I don't know.
That's the hot topic.
It's the hot topic.
That's what everyone wants totalk about.
But our democracy is crumbling,so voting is also really
(49:12):
interesting right now.
It's also a hot topic.
Can we ever vote again?
People should care about it.
People who are voting absentee have to attest,
like, I can't be there inperson.
Right.
So they can try to call them andsay, hey, you forgot your
signature.
But, like, they're probably outof town.
They said, I can't come inperson.
So there's not a chance if youmake a mistake to cure your
ballot, as we say, because it'sall in the same time frame.
And sometimes people are so, theelection officials are so busy
(00:22):
because the polls are so packed.
Like, they don't have time untilin the morning.
It becomes the end of the day.
They're like, oh, now we got todo the absentee ballots after
the election.
the end of this whole day whenit was something like we could
have reopened the envelopeschecked off the list made sure
that everyone who the ballots wehave we can count because they
have all the proper things thismakes me very sad this is very
(00:46):
frustrating experience ofelection law and your podcast
really and you've signed up toget a lot of bad news so All
right, welcome to New HampshireHas Issues, the podcast that
(01:09):
dares to ask, are we first inthe nation for how accessible it
is to vote?
That's a good one.
Thank you.
The podcast that dares to ask,do you have your birth
certificate with you right now?
No.
No.
Sorry, Liz.
Excellent tagline, Mackenzie.
(01:29):
Well done.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I didn't think about that onefor a while.
I bet.
That's such a good one.
I have a passport regularlyavailable, but I don't bring it
with me.
I'm not on the move with mypassport.
You don't carry it around withyou all the time.
I don't.
I have my driver's license withme at all times-ish, but not my
passport and definitely not mybirth certificate.
Your tagline is fantastic.
(01:49):
Do you have your birthcertificate on you right now?
I don't.
Now it's somewhere in my house.
It's somewhere in here, but Iwould have to find it.
I am your I'm your host, LizCanada, and joining me today is
the director of New HampshireCampaign for Voting Rights,
Mackenzie Taylor.
Hi, Mackenzie.
Thank you for being here.
Wow.
Thanks for having me, Liz.
I'm excited.
I am so thrilled that you arehere because, yes, voting is
(02:12):
important, and yes, folks havesaid democracy is crumbling, but
truly, a few of the previousguests that I've had, when I ask
them at the end of our timetogether, I say, like, what's
something people can do?
A lot of them in their list havesaid, You have to go and vote.
So it's like, you know who Ineed is Mackenzie to come tell
me, what is it like to go votein New Hampshire?
(02:33):
So I'm hoping you could teach mesome things today.
Happy to do that andunfortunately share some tough
news.
This podcast is full of toughnews.
It's full of issues.
It's right in the title.
It's the whole premise of thisshow.
Indeed, indeed.
I thought we would start with asimple question.
Maybe it's a little bit morecomplicated than some of my
other simple questions.
(02:54):
But I used to live in Colorado.
I lived there for not quite 10years.
So I voted there a few times.
When I voted there, we would getour ballots in the mail.
We would get that.
I don't even remember how far inadvance, but we'd get in the
mail and we would get somethingin the mail that was like this
little booklet of everythingthat was on our ballot.
And it would have like this sideof the issue and this side of
the issue.
I lived in Colorado the yearthat Colorado passed marijuana
(03:18):
legalization.
And so in the booklet would belike, here are the reasons
people support legalizingmarijuana.
Here are the reasons peopleoppose.
it.
But it was like an unbiased,like both sides of the issue so
that as you went through yourballot, you could be like, okay,
let me read about it.
Let me do this.
And then when you finished yourballot, you could, you know,
sign it, put it together anddrop it off in a ballot box, or
(03:39):
could just go on election dayinstead of sending in your
ballot and vote in person.
So with that long preamble of mytime in Colorado and voting, how
many of those things can I do inNew Hampshire?
So many options in Colorado.
And Colorado famously is likeone of the states we use as kind
of an example of access.
(04:00):
So it is a good comparison toNew Hampshire.
All right.
So how are we doing in NewHampshire?
You can do very few of thosethings in New Hampshire.
Some of the way to explain this,I think, is like a little
history lesson to go back to1993.
I'm 11 years old, thriving.
Yes, yes.
I was born.
So it was a big year for me andvoter registration.
(04:20):
Too soon, Mackenzie.
Cut.
Cut the whole episode.
Cut it here.
Painful.
Never mind.
That's fine.
It's fine.
The National Voter RegistrationAct passed in 1993 and had all
of these provisions that includethe voter registration form that
most states use.
You can fill out in person.
You could fill it out with aperson from a nonprofit at your
(04:41):
door, at an event.
You can mail it in.
And you could also register atthe DMV.
So when you're getting yourlicense, interacting with them,
you could also register to vote.
There is an exception to theNVRA.
The bill said the only statesthat don't have to do this is if
you have a same day, like onelection day, voter registration
continuously.
If you can register on electionday, you don't have to do all
(05:04):
these things.
So New Hampshire, being who weare, said, great, we're going to
do that.
We don't want to work with thefederal government.
That's a lot of work.
It might be a lot of money.
So we're just going to pass sameday registration.
So they passed election dayregistration, which is great.
Very, really great.
We're, for that reason, exemptfrom the National Voter
Registration Act.
(05:24):
Although same day registrationis great they kind of said okay
great we're done that's itmission accomplished roll the
banner out election dayregistration is really important
because in a lot of states thatare nvra states you have to
register by a certain time rightand then if you're not sorry
like we'll see you next timelike you didn't register in time
(05:44):
colorado is a good examplebecause i believe in colorado
you can register ahead of timeyou can register online you can
register at the dmv and you canalso if you skip all of those
things you like miss everysingle one you can register in
person on election day.
That sounds pretty good.
We can do both.
So it's not if you do same-dayregistration, same-day voter
(06:05):
registration on election day,then you're not allowed to do
these other things.
That's not the case.
Other states have done both ofthem.
We can have it all.
Yes.
And also you talk about votingvia mail, mailing ballots, early
vote.
We don't have those things hereeither.
I think about 80% of peopleregister to vote in New
Hampshire on election day.
And most Most people, also avast majority, vote on election
(06:30):
day, not by absentee ballot.
There is an absentee process ifyou're out of town.
If you have a disability, thelaw was expanded a little bit to
count in that absence to clarifythat if you are working.
So if I'm a firefighter whoworks 12-hour shifts, I might
still be in Manchester, but I'mworking the entire time the
polls are open.
So those folks can voteabsentee.
(06:52):
If you have child carerequirements or you care for
another adult and you aren'table to go to the polls, those
people can also vote absentee.
And if there's a snowstorm ontown meeting day, there's a
special little provision thatthe Monday before, if it's going
to be an emergency, you can govote absentee in person because
(07:13):
you don't want to travel in thestorm.
So those folks can voteabsentee.
Assuming that the storm is notalso happening on the Monday
before?
Well, if it's happening theMonday before, you got to make a
choice.
If it's a two-day storm.
Hope that big, huge snowstormisn't today.
Right.
Okay.
Because I think it was two orthree years.
I think it was at least two in arow that there were big storms
(07:33):
on town meeting day in March.
Oh, I remember.
And everyone said, can wepostpone?
So they added that provision in.
But it's a pretty small list.
And the Constitution in NewHampshire says absence and
disability are the reasons.
So those are guaranteed.
And we have made sure that we'reincluding the other things
there.
We could expand it and haveeveryone have the option to vote
(07:55):
absentee.
Right.
We have not done that.
So it is a pretty small group ofpeople who can vote by absentee
ballot.
And if not, you got to vote onelection day.
And you could go to your town orcity clerk's office and register
to vote before election day.
Or you can register on electionday.
There's not an online option.
There's not an option with avolunteer organization.
(08:17):
It's limited.
I can't go on the old internetand say, I would like to
register to vote in NewHampshire.
I can't do that.
You cannot.
You can, if you Google that,it'd probably take you to the
Secretary of State's website andit would say, here's how you do
it.
You go to your town or you go onelection day.
So can I print a form out andmail it in?
No.
You actually don't even, theform is not even on the website.
(08:39):
Can't find it.
Not available.
It's kind of a secret.
So it's like a treasure hunt.
If you want to vote, X marks thespot and the X is your town
clerk's office.
We have somehow decided, andagain, this decision was made in
the 90s.
It has changed.
We have changed a little bit.
Like we are talking viacomputer.
It's...
We are inside the computer rightnow.
We're in the computer.
So kind of the process was like,it's got to be in person.
(09:02):
You got to register with anelection official in person,
face to face.
And that's a nice process, Iguess, but it really limits the
access.
And we're talking about, I livein Manchester, so my city
clerk's office is open regularbusiness hours.
I think they're open late onTuesdays.
They're open a little bit laterinto the evening.
If I lived in Shelburne.
(09:23):
Shelburne, yeah.
Or Errol.
There or not.
many towns where I know theyare.
In most, I don't know thoseclerks hours by heart, but a lot
of smaller places, the townclerk might be open one day or
two days a week.
Some of them are open, you know,for a couple hours on the second
Saturday of the month.
So because it's one kind ofperson, you know, it's a very
small town.
(09:43):
Right.
And that's what they need forlike their town business.
But it does mean that there are,if you're, if you can't register
on election day and you got togo to your town clerk's office,
you got to like put it on thecalendar, get time off make sure
you don't have a conflictbecause there's not a large list
of options of how to get thereand even with like a small town
(10:05):
that has a you know a part-timetown clerk who's maybe there two
days a week or whatever it mightbe another organization like in
other states other organizationscan sometimes register people at
you know big community eventsthey will have like come
register to vote here we can'tdo that in new hampshire either
no not allowed the only peoplewho can register people to vote
(10:26):
are election officials folks whoare working at the polls on
election day sometimes peopleget deputized by the election
officials but you can't havelike a voter registration drive
here where a bunch of volunteersgo out and say let's make sure
people have updated theirregistration that is not allowed
oh so so it makes it a littlebit harder makes it a little
challenging to register hereokay so if i am new to new
(10:49):
hampshire as i once was notsuper long ago and i want to
register on election day i'vemissed everything the the
election is here.
I want to go vote.
What do I need to do to be ableto register to vote on election
day?
A couple years ago, let's, let'ssay it's 2022.
You would just bring yourself,you would bring your ID.
(11:10):
And if you didn't have the ID,wasn't erupted your address, you
know, you hadn't yet, maybe ithad your old address on it,
maybe had an old name on it, butyou could still, you would go to
the polls and you'd give thatinformation.
Anything that wasn't on thatproof of ID, if you didn't have
it with you, you could sign, youwould have test yes I am Liz
Canada I live here here's myaddress this is the party I
(11:30):
choose if you choose one andthen sign and say under severe
penalty of voter fraud I test Iam 18 years old I'm a U.S.
citizen I'm domiciled so likelive basically is a fancy word
for live in the place that I sayI do bring down my address and
you are who you say you are I'mme Liz Canada hello 18 or older
(11:52):
U.S.
citizen domiciled live in NewHampshire and I really am me.
Yes.
And I would have to sign a legalform that's like, I am not
lying.
And if I am lying, I'm in bigtrouble.
That very elusive voterregistration form that's very
hard to find has that on it.
You're signing all of that.
If you didn't have, for example,proof of address, you'd have to
(12:12):
sign something else.
They would send something toyou.
So there's a lot of checks inthere.
But at the end of the day, ifyou were a qualified voter, you
could go, you'd make sure youfill out the form and then be
registered to vote, cast yourballot.
Now, in the year 2020, or notbelieving people's attesting on
their signature anymore.
So you got to go with you.
Who's the we in that sentence?
(12:33):
Because I feel like we, you andme, probably believe people if
they say I am signing a legaldocument under threat of voter
fraud and being a big trouble.
Like I would believe thosepeople, right?
The legislature in 2024 and thenthe governor decided that we
needed, everyone needed physicalproof of everything to go in you
(12:55):
got to prove your identity soyou got to have something that
has your photo on it so yourphoto ID right could be state ID
still at this point in time youcan use like a military ID a
student ID something that's likea government ID official has
your name your photo so you cansee as you are and an expiration
date like we know that it'srecently updated yeah proof of
(13:17):
your age so that could be onyour license it could be if you
don't have your license like abirth certificate or a passport
and So something that shows youridentity, your age, your
domicile, your address.
So again, a license could dothis.
A rental agreement, a lease, amortgage, an official bill, like
(13:38):
an electric bill.
Those things can prove that.
And then the final one, which isthe most unique to New
Hampshire, is your proof ofcitizenship.
So this can only be proved withthree things.
Your birth certificate, yourpassport, which not everyone has
either.
Not everyone has.
And then if you are anaturalized citizen
naturalization papers.
So for me, I was born in NewHampshire, one of the few, and
(14:01):
my birth certificate would showthat I was a U.S.
citizen because it's from theUnited States and my passport.
If you're someone who'snaturalized and you have an
international birth certificate,it's going to be your passport
or your naturalization papers.
I don't know about other people.
I don't carry my passport orbirth certificate in my back
pocket or around with me.
(14:21):
It's in a safe place.
Or it's being sent off to berenewed.
Right.
Right.
Right now.
So that is the thing.
Most people might carry aroundtheir ID, their license.
College ID.
Right.
College ID.
Yeah.
Something with their picture onit.
I know.
I used to have my college ID onone of those lanyards.
You'd come in with your lanyard.
Do the college students still dothat, or is that just in the
(14:42):
year 2000?
Yikes.
I was in college.
You would have a lanyard, butyou better not wear it around
your neck.
That's what you do for freshmanorientation.
A spinning on.
Yes.
Right, right, right.
But then you outgrow it withintwo weeks.
Right.
Yeah.
lanyard with the ID on it.
Yeah, I hear that.
It would be a good way, though,to make sure everyone has their
proof of ID when they go tovote.
You can vote.
Everyone's got their lanyard.
That's right.
(15:04):
So that last piece was new lastyear, or went into effect the
end of mid-November of lastyear.
There's some states that youneed proof of citizenship for
voting in the state elections,but those states also might have
other ways to register.
We're pretty unique in thatyou've got to register in
person, either on election dayor with your clerk's office, and
(15:25):
you better have your documentaryproof of citizenship with you in
order to do it.
So if you went in, you were new,and you were like, I've got my
ID, it has my address, it has myage, it has my name, I probably
showed my passport or birthcertificate in order to get
this.
Is that enough?
They would say, no, we don'thave proof of citizenship.
Go home, get it, and come back.
(15:46):
Holy smokes.
So if it's October, and somehowI've missed all of the election
conversations, which it feelsreally hard to do in New
Hampshire to miss all theelection conversations.
It would be kind of nice.
I think maybe people'salgorithms do that for them,
where they just don't see thestuff.
But if it's October, my friendis like, hey, you got to
(16:07):
register to vote.
Are you going to do that?
And I don't have my birthcertificate and I don't have a
passport.
What option do I have to vote inNovember?
I mean, you could see how toexpedite a passport.
That's expensive, Mackenzie.
Yeah, I mean, the passportitself is also expensive as I
recently have learned about the$130 plus mailing plus the
(16:31):
photos process.
I mean, you have to find proofsomehow.
You have to try to figure outhow to get those things
expedited, but it takes a while,right?
It's like, it's notinstantaneous.
If you are someone who's reallylucky that you missed this, but
you live in New Hampshire,right?
It might be quicker for you toget a birth certificate because
you're able to go to the town orthe state and that's an easier
(16:52):
process.
But if you were born inCalifornia California is quite
far away.
I don't know what the process isthere.
Or any other state.
Any other state.
Literally any other state.
It's not going to be as quick asdriving down the block and
getting it.
You know what?
I did this test, actually.
So I was born in New Jersey.
I'm going to whisper it.
I was born in New Jersey.
(17:13):
I don't have my birthcertificate.
I'm sure I had it at some point.
I was born.
And I have moved to differentstates and, you know, in all the
moves, boxes, boxes, boxes.
I don't know where it is.
So I ordered it in the springbecause I I'm like someday I'm
gonna need sooner or latersooner or later I'm gonna need
this birth certificate so Iordered it and to order it from
(17:33):
New Jersey it took me like twominutes like it was very easy to
order remotely to order onlinebut then it took me like seven
weeks to get it yeah that's thethat's one of one of the issues
is it's not right away andfamously not everyone who lives
in New Hampshire was born in NewHampshire what many legislators
(17:55):
are only now finding outbreaking news not everyone was
born here yes their personaltown clerk doesn't have their
birth certificate oh my god andthat's one of the problems I am
in the process of changing myname on my passport it's kind of
the last of a long list ofthings yeah and you do have to
(18:17):
send the full thing in the fullthe full passport and my
marriage certificate in the mailThe original documents have to
go in the mail.
Yes.
When you do that, you don't haveit with you.
And I don't know how long thatwill take.
Right.
Yeah.
(18:38):
And then it's gone and you donot have that document until it
is returned to you.
I mean, I'm hoping that theyquickly send it back because it
feels a little high pressure.
But yeah, I'm currently goingthrough that process.
And so there's no appeal.
It's not like I can show up onelection day and be like, no,
no, I ordered it.
I promised Right.
Correct.
As of the law right now, that'show it is.
(19:03):
And we saw this.
That's a lot of yikes rightthere, Mackenzie.
That's a lot of yikes.
When did this take effect?
Because we had a huge electionin 2024.
Did it affect people then?
I think they knew it was goingto be a big deal because I think
it went into effect November11th or so, about a week after
(19:23):
the election.
I see.
So as soon as people, you know,if they were proactive in going
to their clerk's office, it wasin effect right then.
Again, most people register orupdate their registration on
election day.
So we saw in town elections.
Yeah, in Exeter, we vote inMarch for our town elections.
So that's something we just didin March.
(19:45):
Yep.
So we had some observers, likenonpartisan observers,
volunteers who went to the pollsto kind of watch and say, like,
how is this going to work.
Are people going to know?
For town meeting, townelections, you have pretty
engaged voters, folks who aregoing to...
You are pretty dang engaged ifyou're going to town elections.
Big shout out to everybody whois at their town election voting
(20:09):
on zoning amendments.
Cheers to all of you.
The school funding, the schoolfunding, buying a new fire
station.
I mean, important things.
Yes, absolutely.
But it's not quite apresidential election turnout.
Which is actually kind of wildbecause the impact you can have
on your town.
Count elections is sosignificant, but that's for
another day, perhaps.
(20:30):
So we had some observers,nonpartisan observers there just
watching, hey, is this, arepeople going to be turned away?
Do people have their stuff?
Are people registering?
Like, what is the deal?
And we were blown away by thenumber of people who the calls
we were getting from observerssaying we've had, oh, one person
turned away, two turned away.
There's been 10 people trying tovote and three got turned away.
(20:53):
So we thought it was gonna be abig deal.
We weren't sure how many peoplewho are voting in these really
small elections wereregistering.
SPEAKER_01 (21:00):
We
SPEAKER_00 (21:00):
found out it was a lot.
I believe the total number is121 people that we have heard of
across the town elections andspecial election that happened
so far this year who went toeither register or vote and
didn't have all of the proofneeded and were turned away.
And that's not any of the citiesyet.
(21:21):
No, that's not any of thecities.
It's not Manchester.
It's not Nashua.
Whoa.
So that was a really highnumber.
And I will caveat that some ofthose folks might have come back
and voted.
And like, that's great.
They were motivated enough to doso.
Dig through the boxes, find thatpassport.
Haven't traveled in six years.
Got to find it.
(21:41):
Go back home.
Didn't know it was a law.
Came back.
But we basically between havingfolks at the polls saying, oh,
OK, you got turned away andtrying to talk to people, asking
the election officials and thendoing some follow up to the
election officials and saying,hey, we know you had an
election, do you remember howmany people were turned away?
That was the number that we gotof that many people were
(22:02):
impacted.
So we are once again going totry to watch this and get a
sense of it during the cityelections.
We want people to not be turnedaway, to know ahead of time, but
we think it's really importantto understand with this new law,
what is the impact?
Because it's very new, it's verydifferent, and there's not other
(22:23):
states that have the identicalprocess to us.
Can I just, I'm just going toask the question, Mackenzie, is
this like a touch, like a smidgeof voter suppression?
A little bit?
I don't like using big words,but I feel voter suppression.
This feels like a lot ofbarriers.
(22:44):
Like you got to jump through alot of hoops and there's no sort
of like fail safe.
Like if none of these thingshappen, but you still are
someone who should be able tovote that day, it doesn't seem
like there's a backup.
Absolutely.
Because we're seeing people who,again, they're eligible to vote.
They meet all the categories.
We heard of folks who came inwith their military ID to
(23:06):
register and that was notenough.
And they were turned awaybecause they didn't have their
birth certificate or theirpassport.
Folks are eligible and they arebeing turned away and restricted
from voting solely because oflack of documents.
Not because they don't meet thecriteria laid out in the
Constitution.
solely because they either don'thave like someone who doesn't
(23:29):
have their birth certificatedoesn't have a passport or there
was a woman a voter who waswilling to tell her story who
came in to vote wanted to voteon the school she had her young
kids with her yeah and shedidn't know about this new law
she was like oh I'm gonnaregister I'm gonna vote new to
town sure and she didn't haveher passport or birth
certificate so she was turnedaway and then it was like the
(23:49):
day got away from her she hadher kids until she was running
errands and she wasn't able tocome back it is a lot of work to
parent.
End of sentence.
Right.
So that mom came in with herkids, couldn't register to vote.
The day got away from her.
And what happened?
And she just didn't, she didn'tregister and she wasn't able to
cast her ballot.
She showed up to vote for theschools her kids go to.
(24:09):
Yes.
And she was turned away.
Right.
Unbelievable.
Believable, but unbelievable.
There is an extra piece herethat I neglected to mention that
for many of us who have changedour last names because of
marriage or any other reasons.
Oh my God.
Your birth certificate does notmatch.
I was not born Taylor.
It didn't predict your future?
(24:31):
It wasn't like, we're prettysure that Mackenzie's going to
meet somebody.
So your birth certificatedoesn't have your married name.
And it doesn't change.
I was born as St.
Germain.
Right.
So for those people, or peoplewho have gotten divorced and
changed their name, peoplechange their name for all sorts
of reasons.
That doesn't match their birthcertificate.
(24:53):
But marriage is a big one.
That's a big one.
And typically, dare I say,typically women are the ones.
It does seem to be mostly womenwho change their name when they
get married.
So this law might affect womenmore.
So they have to bring a specialfifth document, potentially, to
(25:17):
be able to show that that personon their birth certificate, the
baby on the birth certificate,was indeed them.
There was a lot of very, very,very frustrating discussion
about this, obviously, when itwas going through the
legislature.
One of my favorite things thatthey said, it's not only those
three documents that provecitizenship.
There could be other ways, likesomeone who was there when you
(25:38):
were born.
It was unclear what else wouldbe the document.
So could you bring in the doctorwho was there at your birth?
Would that be enough?
It might depend on the electionofficial if they felt like that
was enough.
I honestly feel like they wouldbe like, well, do we have proof?
proof that you're who you sayyou are let's see your medical
degrees if my mom goes in andshe has her proof of citizenship
(26:02):
and then it's like a russiandoll like right and we have a
photo so there was a lot of nono no this is not that hard but
there's not there's not thatmany documents and it's really
easy to say it's not that hardif you're someone who lives in
breeze this and has lived in newhampshire your whole life and
has your birth certificate andhas never changed your name just
it's some people some peopleit's not a lot it's not everyone
(26:23):
folks who've changed theirnames, which in just many
instances, women who get marriedand take their spouse's names,
they are going to be impacted bythis if they try to register to
vote.
What about if they're registeredto vote and then they move to
another town?
Does that impact them or arethey fine because they just
moved?
So what the law says is that ifyou move from one place to
(26:47):
another, you need to show thatidentity again.
So proof of ID, you always haveto show proof of ID, even if
you're registered to just goingin to vote they have to make
sure you are who you say you arenow you are supposed to only
have to show id and proof ofaddress domicile i moved here's
my new address here's my newlease my new mortgage whatnot
sure id although a lot of peoplemove and you don't change your
(27:09):
address on your license becauseit's a pain they give you that
paper one that no one acceptsyep but you gotta show your your
new address you're not supposedto have to show citizenship
again because you're alreadyregistered right if they can
look it up in the database tosee you're already registered.
Right.
But a theme.
I'm worried about where thissentence is going.
(27:30):
So if you go and register maybeat City Hall, they have some
time.
They might probably have theability in the system to, oh, I
can look it up.
I can see.
There's only a few people, acouple of people in each town at
most, really, who have access tothat statewide database.
And most people who areregistering you to vote at the
polling places don't have thataccess.
(27:50):
Even if they did have access, aton of polling places in New
Hampshire don't have Wi-Fi.
Oh, my God.
You're like, can you justconnect to my hotspot so I can
vote, please?
It's like the statewidedatabase.
They don't just give out accessto everyone because it's
everyone's information.
It's a very serious database.
(28:10):
But we've made this law whereit's like, oh, well, if you can
just check and see they're inthere, you're good.
But the actual process ofchecking to see that they're in
there, that they're alreadyregistered is much easier said
than done.
So we did see, again, on-townmeeting there were some people
where they were like well wecan't look you up to know that
it's you so we would ratherthey're the election if they're
(28:31):
kind of on the hook so our stateis requiring people to go in
person on election day topolling locations that in some
cases do not have wi-fi to lookup if they are already
registered to vote and thenyou're stuck if you don't have
those documents somewhere elsecorrect do i dare say again that
it might be voter suppression itcould it could be The other
(28:54):
piece here is that sometimespeople get removed from the
voter rolls.
The person I was registeringnext to when I went to change my
name during the election lastyear in November was standing in
a very long line to update myregistration, update my new last
name on my registration with mymarriage certificate in hand.
He thought he was registered.
He went, he went all the way inline.
(29:16):
This is like 6am.
He went all the way up to thefront to check in and they said,
we don't have you on here.
Oh my
SPEAKER_01 (29:22):
God.
SPEAKER_00 (29:22):
So then they sent him back.
Back to the end of theregistration line where he ended
up next to me.
No.
So this happens where if youdon't vote frequently, which is
a lot of people don't votefrequently.
Yeah.
You got removed from the voterrolls.
If the last time you voted wasfor either Barack Obama or John
McCain.
You probably got, they said, notactive.
(29:43):
Not active.
They removed you.
So there's people who didn't,who they thought they, you know,
this person might've said, well,I voted in 2012.
Like I thought I was still onthere or maybe he voted in 20...
For one reason or another, hewas removed.
He wasn't aware he was removed.
And for those people, again,you're probably going to the
polls with your ID, but youprobably are not like, oh, just
(30:07):
in case I'll bring my birthcertificate.
The core to a lot of thisproblem, I mean, there's a lot
of problems here, right?
It's a self-inflicted.
A lot of issues, do we dare say?
Yes.
Self-inflicted issues.
But is that we do almosteverything on election day.
Like if our elections in NewHampshire are like a house of
cards, it's like all built onlike this one election day card.
(30:30):
So when things don't go well onelection day, if you wait, you
worked, you're like, I'm goingto go after work.
My polls close at seven.
I'm going to get there at 545.
And then you don't havesomething with you.
Like we don't have a lot of roomfor error.
We don't have a lot of room for,you know, it's just like this
really high pressure day, whichis why the town meeting
(30:51):
snowstorms, those kind of thingsare such a big deal.
deal because we don't reallyspread out the vote at all.
We register probably on electionday and you vote on election day
and when something goes wrong onelection day that's it.
Like you're kind of out of luck.
Why?
That's terrible.
Why are we doing this Mackenzie?
Because New Hampshire got sameday registration we said that's
it.
Oh no.
We love election day so much wewant to do 100% of the stuff on
(31:14):
it.
Doesn't this put a lot ofpressure on the election
officials who are like theretrying to help people?
It does indeed.
Yes.
And a lot of other states likethings are run at the county
level and they might have like alot of professional staff i mean
most in most places there'sthey're not not a lot of states
where there's like oh we have somany professional staff you know
(31:34):
a lot of people areunderappreciated understaffed
totally but things are run at amuch larger level like a county
level in new hampshireeverything's at the town level
and all of the electionofficials are town by town
running their elections town bytown city by city and then
normally the poll workers whohelp kind of run things on
election day make sure they'reat the polling place those folks
are volunteers they're oftenstipended stipended award I get
(31:57):
stipend sure let's go with ityeah they just put skibbity in
the dictionary we can saystipended that's fine so they're
running things on election daythey're up really early they're
there until late in the eveningso it's it's run by you know
mostly volunteers who are doingthis because they want to like
serve their community they wantto help with the elections and
when there's long lines like wesaw a lot of people voted in the
(32:19):
2024 presidential electionpeople waited an hour two hours
hours plus to register and thenvote in some of these bigger
towns wasn't like oh we've got abunch of people back at the
office we can bring it like thepeople you have it's who's there
they're responsible forexecuting the election day and
it's kind of like it is againit's like most of the
registration happens you havepeople who register most of the
(32:41):
voting happens there and thenthe other thing that's a little
wonky but so for the people whodo vote absentee and we've got
more absentee restrictions so iguess we can talk about those
too yeah the people who do voteabsentee they cast their
absentee ballot they're sealedin their envelopes and then they
stay until election day and thenthey get opened on election day
so again like we're not openingany envelopes until election day
(33:01):
we're opening all up we got todo it all at once yes something
we did during covid in the 2020election was we let the election
officials not open the ballotsbut just open up the outside
envelope to make sure okay yepliz canada yep they signed their
name it's completed the ballotlike this is a submitted ballot
(33:21):
and then say okay we we have ourabsentee ballot in from Liz
Canada.
They returned their ballot.
And going through, so they werelike opening them, they were
checking.
And if someone, for example,forgot to sign it, someone could
call them and say, hey, they'vegot your ballot down here.
You actually need to sign it forit to count.
And that person can go, oh mygosh, I forgot.
I'm going to go sign it.
I want my ballot to count.
I will go do it.
I want my ballot to count.
(33:42):
I went through the wholeabsentee voting process.
I've done all those things.
It's not easy.
I registered.
That was happening earlier in alot of places because so many
people were voting absentee.
It saved a lot of time.
And then on election day, Theyalready said, oh, we know who
this person is.
Great.
Their ballot is in.
They've voted on the checklist.
Run their ballot through.
We stopped doing that.
It was a one-time only thingbecause New Hampshire election
(34:03):
day happens on election day.
So now, in addition to most ofthe people registering on
election day, most people votingon election day, we're also
doing all of that processing onelection day.
You mentioned that there areother restrictions on absentee
voting.
Hot off the presses.
New restrictions coming in hot.
Let's hear them.
So in order to vote absentee,you've got to have a reason.
It's a pretty short list ofreasons like I am not going to
(34:25):
be here I cannot get to thepolls yeah and you sign you have
to already be registered becauseif you weren't registered
there's like a really difficultmail process that I won't even
get into because very few peopleuse it because it's like
everything else a littleunwieldy so you're registered
and the way it has always beenyou fill out the form you sign
it again I attest you have tocheck the box like I have a
(34:45):
disability I'm going to be outof town I have child care it's
Monday in Tobarosa snowstorm allthe options on there and you
sign it and you attest like II'm going to be out of town.
I am who I say I am.
Your clerk gets it.
They mail you the ballot.
You fill out your ballot.
You put it in a confusing set ofenvelopes, which is why the
inner envelope, you have to putyour name, you sign it, and then
that ballot would count,presumably, now that you did
(35:07):
everything else.
But we have once again alsodecided, we, the legislature.
Not you and me.
Right.
Not we.
New Hampshire legislators havedecided that that process also
wasn't hard enough for them.
A majority of legislators, notall of them.
They weren't like, this is, weunanimously believe this.
This is a great idea.
A majority of legislators said,what if you also had to prove
(35:28):
your ID for this too?
So now in order to request anabsentee ballot, you need to do
one of three things.
Otherwise, you're not gettingyour ballot.
They're not going to send it toyou.
You need to include a copy ofyour ID.
Most people mail in the form.
So I guess now you can take apicture in your phone.
But then you have to print it.
(35:53):
able to email it it is a littleunclear it doesn't say you can
it doesn't say you can't itmight depend on your clerk so
maybe you can email it in againthis is we will see yep if you
can't do that you can you canget it notarized a much easier
process oh a notary yeah andwe're also talking about people
like a lot of people who willvote absentee they might not
(36:14):
have transportation like theyhave disabilities they're not oh
i'm just gonna while i'm runningmy day full of errands i might
as well swing by the bank andget my thing notarized So if you
don't have a copy of your IDenclosed, you can have it
notarized and then that is okay.
Or you can go in person.
We love the face-to-facecontact.
Or you can go in person andrequest your ballot there and
(36:36):
show them your physical IDbecause then they can go, okay,
yep, you are, you're going tosay you are, and then they'll
give you a ballot.
They want people to go in personso much.
Is it that they want friends andrelationships and community?
Like, is it just like they wantto talk?
Because we can solve thatwithout voter suppression.
We can find a way to get peopleto talk to one another.
So that is now, so as ofSeptember 30th.
(36:59):
September 30th, 2025, because Idon't know when this will be
published.
So as of September 30th, 2025.
In order, when you send in yourabsentee ballot request, you
have to do one of those things.
Copy of ID, notary, go inperson.
So how much voter fraud ingeneral have we seen in New
(37:19):
Hampshire?
Because there must be someexplanation for why our
lawmakers are spending theirprecious time passing laws to
make it more difficult to vote.
So what are they stopping?
There's, you know, there's notmuch.
Not much, like how much?
(37:40):
This I think will be the onlymention probably ever of the
Heritage Foundation on yourpodcast.
Ooh, shout out.
They have a tool on theirwebsite where they...
track cases of voter fraud.
Okay.
And you would think, oh my gosh,they have this tracker.
It must be so many.
It must be so many.
Yeah.
What does the tracker tell us?
So this is from 1982 to 2025.
(38:03):
The entire existence of my life,1982, 2025.
Yes.
27.
It's not zero.
People who committed fraud andthen they were caught and then
we have them in this databasebecause they were prosecuted and
they can't vote anymore.
27 is less than the entirenumber of people turned away on
town meeting days in NewHampshire.
This spring this past spring innew hampshire for the new law we
(38:26):
have and again town meeting daysdoes not include the cities like
manchester nashua keen omg wowwow wow wow a lot of these cases
a lot of being like there's 27overall so like a lot a few of
them are people who voted twicewhich again illegal should not
do that don't vote twice nothingthat we're passing addresses
(38:49):
that issue they had a house inmassachusetts and they had a
house in New Hampshire and theyvoted both places.
You can't do that.
That's illegal.
There is a system called ERIC.
It's a multi-state network.
And basically it compares thevoter files of the different
states, so the voter rolls.
And it has all the information,you know, it has the name, the
age, the address.
So that system, a lot of statesare in our neighbors in
(39:12):
Massachusetts, Vermont, Maine, Ibelieve are all in it, compares
the list.
Then if someone is registeredtwice, they go, alert everyone,
someone's registered twice.
And again, this is like, there'svery few people that this has
happened, but if we're reallyserious about cracking down on
cases like these 27.
In New Hampshire over the courseof 43 years.
In New Hampshire since 1982.
(39:32):
It would be choosing being partof a system that can see, oh,
this person's registered in bothplaces.
Because some people, they movefrom one place to another.
They just need to be, you know,they're not trying to vote
twice.
They just need to be taken off.
But if you do try to vote twice,you know, this type of system
would catch it and would makesure, you know, New Hampshire
and Massachusetts is going tonotice like, hey, this person's
on both the year rolls.
That bill has been filed.
(39:52):
to join that system quite anumber of times and and we're
super passing it the legislaturehas said no we don't we don't
like this at all we said wedon't want to give our data to
anyone else the other thing thatEric requires states to do they
don't like are they afraid it'sa man named Eric are they afraid
that all of this information isgoing to a guy named Eric the
(40:14):
one guy I mean there are someconspiracies about obviously of
course there are of course thereare there's no reason behind it
but of course there are somepeople in the legislature or
have opposed this have said theydon't like that being part of
ERIC, a member state, requiresthe state to send a postcard to
everyone who is not registeredbut is eligible saying, this is
(40:34):
how you would register.
Shocking.
Wait, wait, wait.
Let me talk that.
I think my brain turned off,right?
This is totally reasonable.
So they don't like Mr.
ERIC because it would require orit would allow, require or
allow?
Require the state.
Require the state.
the state to send a littlepostcard that says...
(40:55):
A one-time postcard.
A one-time postcard in the mailto say you are not registered.
Here is how you can register.
Correct.
They are a post...
That is...
They're like, we want you tofind out by going in person.
Yes.
We want you to learn the bignews by going in person.
Sorry, if we were to hiresomeone who would just stand in
the town square and do it, maybethat would be better because it
(41:15):
would be an in-personinteraction.
So those have been a lot of thepushback.
But it just, it illuminates tome that this is not It's a lot
about preventing voter fraud,because if it was, we have
systems that would address thevery few types of cases there
(41:46):
are.
so that they can vote.
I can't wrap my head around it.
I can't.
And I'm also thinking of collegestudents who are here, and this
is their home.
This is where they live.
And I imagine that quite a fewof them don't have passports
(42:06):
yet, and they haven't moved tocollege with their birth
certificate.
Why would they go to collegewith their birth certificate?
I was not.
You're packing up for college.
You're leaving home for thefirst time.
Hey, take your most valuabledocument that's very difficult
to replace.
You're going to need it whenyou're in freshman English.
They don't have those documents.
(42:27):
A couple of the bills that arecoming up next year specifically
are focused on removing studentIDs from the ability, from like
those approved documents.
So making it harder for collegestudents.
So, you know, we're like, inorder to vote, you have to have
your identity, you got to haveyour citizenship.
You have to make sure you havesomething, your ID shows your
(42:49):
name, your, you know, photo,like we know who you say, like
the purpose is to who are youand are you here in front of us
like is that your name right butnow you know if they want to
pass these things it's like ohbut not that way we don't like
that document one of the bills Ithink it allows private school
and like charter school IDs butnot college IDs so the
(43:10):
University of New Hampshire agovernment institution would not
be applicable but private schooldown the street would be
Phillips Exeter your ID willwork Plymouth State University
will not No.
It's great.
But those are state.
I mean, that to me, it seemspretty clear that it is.
(43:31):
It's like we don't want collegestudents to vote.
But it's like the purpose of thelaw.
If you're saying if you're ifwe're taking out your word, you
want to make sure that everyonewe see their photo so it knows
it's your name.
But we also don't want to acceptgovernment IDs from the state
universities.
Is it solving a problem or is itvoter suppression?
It's not solving a problem.
It's not solving a problem.
(43:52):
Maybe it's not.
It's a secret third thing.
Elections are coming up again incities.
They are.
We had town elections in thespring.
City elections are in the fall.
So what do we need to know,Mackenzie?
I don't live in a city.
You do.
Some other folks do.
People should, if they are in acity or you know anyone in a
city.
If someone you love is in acity.
Make sure they know about howyou need to register to vote,
(44:15):
like these new requirements.
Take them.
Pick them up and drive them tothe city clerk's office.
One of the benefits of being ina city is you're town or your
city clerk's office is I didn'treally speak for Manchester but
I have to assume open more thanone day a week fingers crossed
which is great moreopportunities to register ahead
of time because I don't thinkespecially based on the town
meeting experience that peopleunderstand what is required and
(44:38):
what was passed in the new lawand like that is really really
important also I think this is Imean this is just generally my
advice is like be a poll workeroh sign up to work at the polls
what does it mean to be a pollworker so there's a number of
different jobs including somepeople who like help with that
registration process people whotell people where to go right
(44:59):
you gotta like this is where youenter oh if you need to register
you go this way folks who helppeople check in yeah people who
you know they'll give youthey'll take your little chip
and give you your ballotcounting ballots at the end of
the night or like helping withthat process at the end of the
night helping people make surethey put the ballots in the
machine and they go in themachine there's a lot of jobs
that exist at the polling placeand again like these are our
(45:20):
elections are run by volunteersbasically Basically, that's a
great way to be involved and tomake sure that, again, because
we have so much pressure onelection day, more hands to be
able to make sure we don't havelong lines and people have
assistance.
And having people who wantpeople to be able to vote is a
benefit at the polls.
That's being an American, right?
Like, don't we care about that?
(45:42):
Am I wrong?
Have I not understood what ourcountry is about?
The reviews of being a pollworker and being there and
getting to see the experience ofpeople cast in their votes
citizens registering for thefirst time and being part of the
process like there are suchglowing reviews really about the
experience and if you want tolike do something that will make
(46:04):
you feel good and like you havehelped and if this episode is
really depressing to you butalso you're like I want to see
this work in real time yes youcan make it you can make an
impact we normally need pollworkers basically everywhere
every single election and I havevolunteered at our polls by
being one of the people whogives out a stick That feels
(46:24):
like one of the most rewardingjobs.
Yes, it is the best job becauseit's literally people are just
so happy to get a sticker.
And if they bring their kids,their kids get a sticker.
So a listener who is as takenaback as I am, if you are
someone who lives in a city oryou know people who live in a
city, make sure that they knowabout these changes because we
(46:47):
want everyone to vote.
Everyone who is eligible tovote, we want them to vote.
And that might mean that theyneed to go get their passports
or birth certificate now.
Right.
They got to start finding itnow.
Because the election is comingin those cities.
And if you live in a town, youdon't need to wait.
You can do all of this now aswell because elections are
coming back around in the springfor your town, your school
(47:10):
district.
Those things are happening inthe spring too.
And be a poll worker.
Sign up to be a poll worker.
And I would say also contactyour legislators because
they're, again, deciding to domore.
Maybe meet with them in person.
They're super interesting.
into meeting in person so whynot set up a meeting in person
the third Saturday of the monthfrom 10 to 12 and talk to them
about like we don't we don'twant this we want to be able to
(47:35):
vote and cast our ballots fairlyand to not have people turned
away from participating becauseagain not long ago just last
year it was if you didn't havethese documents you would sign a
legal form saying I am the Thisperson, these are all true.
And if I am not telling you thetruth, I am in huge legal
(47:57):
trouble.
Yep.
And they took that option away.
The state lawmakers who votedfor this took that away.
And the governor signed it andsaid that was okay.
Signed it.
Okay.
Mackenzie, thank you so much forinfuriating me so very much in
such a short amount of time.
We didn't even get to talk aboutwhat we would do to be better.
Oh my God.
We have to have a follow-up.
We need a follow-up of like,maybe after the city elections,
(48:19):
maybe that would be a good timeto come back and be like, how
did it go?
How How do we stop doing 100% ofour stuff on one day?
There's a song from Dreamgirls,One Night Only.
This is my musical theaterreference.
That's like the theme ofElection Day in New Hampshire in
voting rights.
Wow.
I can't believe that this is athing that happens.
So big party on Election Day.
(48:40):
Bring your passport and yourbirth
SPEAKER_01 (48:42):
certificate.
UNKNOWN (48:47):
Yes.
SPEAKER_00 (48:52):
He got a lot of shout outs on the homeless
episode, too, because he's sosmart.
Compete on who gets more listenson our episodes.
It'll probably be housing.
It'll probably be housing?
I think so.
I don't know.
That's the hot topic.
It's the hot topic.
That's what everyone wants totalk about.
But our democracy is crumbling,so voting is also really
(49:12):
interesting right now.
It's also a hot topic.
Can we ever vote again?
People should care about it.
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.