Jay Newton: Silber bill would eliminate same-day voter registration

In 2001, George W. Bush had just won the election with more Electoral College votes but he lost the popular vote by 543,000 votes. While he knew voter fraud didn’t have anything to do with that loss, he also knew that suppressing the vote would improve his chances of being re-elected, so he initiated an impressive study to find voter fraud. Five years after the Bush administration began its review of voter fraud, the Justice Department had turned up virtually no evidence of a coordinated effort to affect federal elections.

In 2016, Donald J. Trump won his election with more Electoral College votes while losing the popular vote by 2.87 million votes. Worried about the 2020 election, he also tried a voter fraud commission. Headed up by the former Kansas Secretary of State of Kansas, Kris Kobach, who previously conducted a large study that showed a .000017% chance of electoral fraud across 22 states and 84 million votes, Trump’s voter fraud commission was disbanded when they realized they would not be able to produce any evidence of voter fraud.

However, both efforts were successful because by simply having these presidents talk about voter fraud as if it existed, many states were able to enact hundreds of laws making it more difficult to register, stay registered and vote, all with no basis in fact.

We are all aware of the 2nd Amendment and how it is often cited as a Constitutional right and a reason why there should be no gun safety laws.

Well, amendments 15, 19, 24, and 26 to the Constitution guarantee the right to vote to all U.S. citizens 18 years and older, yet Republicans continue to pass law after law making registering, staying registered and voting more difficult. They do this to disenfranchise potential voters among certain groups, such as people with disabilities, college students, low-income voters, and minorities.

New Hampshire House Bill 86 (HB86-FN), sponsored this year by Rep. Norm Silber of Gilford, would eliminate Election Day Registration (EDR), which has been available in NH since 1996, adversely affecting: the disabled, new residents, college students, young people just getting the right to vote and others who are too busy to get to the town hall to register before election day but still really want to vote. There is no evidence that EDR increases voter fraud.

In 2016, 83,142 people took advantage of Election Day Registration in NH. That’s more than 10% of the total 755,850 ballots that were cast. Obviously many NH residents think it is convenient. EDR makes it easier to exercise our Constitutional right to vote. Please call or email Rep. Norm Silber and tell him we don’t need HB86-FN.

Jay Newton

Gilford