NH secretary of state predicts ‘challenges,’ litigation if voter ID bill becomes law

Lawmakers have advanced legislation to require photo identification without exception at polling places in New Hampshire – and to mandate that new voters provide hard evidence of citizenship in order to register.

But Secretary of State Dave Scanlan says some aspects of the bill could be difficult for his office to implement.

In remarks to a committee tasked with identifying voter confidence in elections Monday, Scanlan said a proposal to empower the Secretary of State’s Office to set up a hotline to verify voters’ citizenship status using state records would be “challenging” to implement.

“It could be done, but not without challenges,” he said. To start, he said, there would not be a lot of time to implement it before the next statewide elections in September. The Secretary of State’s Office would have to race to train town and city election officials in how to deal with the new documentary requirements, and they would need to reach out to voters to explain the changes, too, he said.

Scanlan also told reporters he talked “frankly” with Gov. Chris Sununu Monday about the bills, in which he relayed his concerns.

“I said basically the same thing that I said right here: It is something we can administer, but it will have its challenges,” he said, recounting the conversation.

The Legislature has pushed forward two bills that would tighten voter registration and identification requirements. The first, House Bill 1569, would eliminate the affidavits that allow people to vote on Election Day if they do not have identification on them – under penalty of perjury. HB 1569 would also require voters to provide documentation of their citizenship with a birth certificate, passport, naturalization papers, or other proof, in order to register to vote for the first time. Currently, voters may attest to their citizenship without those papers.

The second bill, House Bill 1370, would create the same requirement as HB 1569 but would also allow Scanlan’s office to set up a call line that would allow local election officials to call state officials and seek proof of a voter’s citizenship. The Secretary of State’s Office could collaborate with the Division of Motor Vehicles and the Attorney General’s Office to do so, the bill states.

HB 1569 has passed both Republican-led chambers and is heading to the governor’s desk. HB 1370 is not yet heading to Sununu but is instead awaiting a final vote by the House and Senate on Thursday.

Republicans have said the two bills are efforts to increase confidence in New Hampshire’s elections by providing strong verification that every voter meets the citizenship, age, and domicile requirements.

But Democrats and voting rights groups argue the bills will block off voting for people who do meet those requirements but who don’t have all the documentation on hand – particularly citizenship documents that can be hard to replace.

The governor’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment about his conversations with Scanlan. In press conferences, Sununu has not directly stated whether he would sign or veto the bill, but he has said he does not see a need for more changes to election laws this year.

If signed by Sununu, both HB 1569 and HB 1370 would take effect immediately, meaning that they would affect the upcoming state primary on Sept. 10 and the general election on Nov. 5.

Scanlan said that immediate implementation would be difficult. “We would have to start right away,” he said.

Scanlan said he has had “superficial” conversations with other agencies about the bill, but that he did not know exactly how the hotline would work should the bill become law.

Republicans have argued that the call line could provide citizenship information for most voters who lacked documentation.

“It is estimated that using the databases that we came up with in meetings with the Secretary of State, the Attorney General’s Office, and the DMV, that there will be very, very few people who will not be able to answer the questions about citizenship, about age, and about domicile,” Sen. James Gray, a Rochester Republican, said on the Senate floor on May 16.

But Scanlan seemed more skeptical Monday. “There is no central citizenship database,” he said.

The secretary made his comments before the Special Committee on Voter Confidence. That committee, convened by Scanlan to look into voter concerns about New Hampshire’s election process after the 2020 presidential election, finished its work and issued recommendations in 2022. It reconvened Monday to hear a report from Scanlan detailing how his office has attempted to implement the recommendations.

Scanlan made clear he has not taken a formal position on the bill, noting that if signed, his office could be a defendant to any lawsuit filed to strike it down.

“I fully expect it is going to be litigated,” he said.

This story was originally published by the New Hampshire Bulletin.

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: NH secretary of state predicts lawsuits if voter ID bill becomes law