On September 30, 2024, the ACLU of New Hampshire, American Civil Liberties Union, and Ropes & Gray LLP filed a federal lawsuit challenging HB 1569, a new, significant, and unconstitutional change to New Hampshire’s voting laws that would create needless barriers to vote and remove some options that people are able to use when registering to vote. We represent the Coalition for Open Democracy, the League of Women Voters of New Hampshire, the Forward Foundation, and five current and future voters.
Under current state law, a person registering to vote who does not have certain documentation can sign a sworn statement at the polls in order to cast their ballot. But, under HB 1569, that option will be removed effective November 11, 2024, likely leading to eligible voters getting turned away at the polls and leaving them wholly unable to vote. Voting is the cornerstone of our democracy — and laws like this, which create unconstitutional roadblocks to voting and which could stop thousands of eligible voters from participating in an election, have no place in our state. Despite the proven accuracy, reliability, and security of New Hampshire’s elections, HB 1569 introduces fundamental changes to the state’s election law that will make it materially harder, if not impossible, for thousands of New Hampshire citizens to exercise their right to vote — changes that violate the First and 14th Amendments of the U.S. Constitution.
This unnecessary new law would, for example, require documentary proof of citizenship for voter registration. Many New Hampshire would-be voters lack ready access to documents (like a birth certificate or passport) to prove citizenship, and their sworn statements have historically been a vital tool for those registering to vote — enabling hundreds, if not thousands, of citizens to vote in the most recent presidential elections, virtually without demonstrated fraud.
HB 1569 is one of the most restrictive voting laws in the entire United States. No state has successfully done what this law attempts in imposing a documentary proof of citizenship requirement to register to vote for federal elections without an affidavit option. Federal courts have weighed in on this issue previously, determining that a similar Kansas law, which imposed a proof of citizenship requirement for state and federal elections, violated both the U.S. Constitution and National Voter Registration Act of 1993.
HB 1569 would also change "voter challenges," which could disqualify certain ballots from being counted at all and would deprive voters of due process when challenging a ballot. Under current law, a prospective voter whose eligibility is successfully challenged by a peer voter (or political-party appointed challenger) is permitted to cast an eligible ballot through a Challenged Voter Affidavit, sworn under the penalties of voter fraud and perjury. HB 1569 entirely removes the right to vote by Challenged Voter Affidavit. Without the availability of this affidavit, any otherwise eligible voter can be disenfranchised if a moderator decides a voter challenge is “more likely than not” to be “well grounded,” a vague standard undefined in HB 1569, without any articulated standard of review or meaningful, readily available right of appeal. This change violates the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
HB 1569 is not scheduled to go into effect until after the November 2024 election.