In the spirit of our Live Free or Die motto, the New Hampshire House is looking at a bill restricting voter rights in the state.
House Bill 1569, proposed by Rep. Bob Lynn, a Republican from Windham, would eliminate the state’s current affidavit system for voters according to the Boston Globe.
The affidavit system allows eligible voters who would otherwise have a difficult time registrering to do so.
The example used by Nancy Marashio of the League of Women Voters of New Hampshire was an excellent one I would like to repeat. How would a married woman identify herself to register? If she uses her license and birth certificate the names most likely will not match. If she does not have a license what then? Should she have to carry her marriage license with her to vote so she can identify herself? What if someone has moved to the state elsewhere and did not quite have all their paperwork yet?
There are a lot of consequences Republican lawmakers just seem to have not considered with legislation such as this, or maybe they have. Restricting access to voting is a pet project of the Republican party, along with a litany of other very unpopular policies of theirs.
One of the most frustrating aspects of these issues is how Republicans posture as the freedom and liberty party, that they are the only ones who will defend said freedoms. The only caveat is that whatever you are doing must fall into their very narrow scope of freedom and liberty, anything outside of that definition is fair game to eliminate.
This is especially problematic with issues such as voting rights, and Republicans should be cheerleading voting accessibility, yet they do not. They do not because enfranchising people is not to their benefit, at least that is what the political conventional wisdom says. The thought is that as voter turnout increases, Republicans lose, therefore a lower turnout leads to a Republican win.
If you have to restrict people from voicing their opinion about your policies at the ballot box, that says a lot more about you than it does me. It tells me two things: One, that you do not believe what you are saying is a winning message but you are unwilling to let your thinking evolve or two, you are arrogant enough to think that your opinion is the only one that is correct and matters.
Now that is not to say one cannot think they are correct, we all would like to be and, to a certain degree, think that we are correct. However it requires a certain amount of hubris to continue to maintain markedly unpopular and frankly hated policy positions, but still think the other guy (the voter) is the problem!
I would like to hope HB 1569 fails in the House and voter access is maintained at its current level in the state. I would also hope to pitch one more thing and that is to be wise in voting, folks. I have a laundry list of issues with the Democratic party, especially the elitist suburban liberal portion of the party, however the Republican party is not the party of freedom and liberty they claim to be.
They will throw you under the bus and back up over you just to make sure they got you. They will even potentially make it harder for you to vote. All in an effort to make the rich richer, the poor poorer and the middle class person’s life more miserable while they run out the back door with all the money.
The late comedian George Carlin said the reason it is called the American Dream is that you have to be, “asleep to believe it.” With a conscious electorate, I hope we could prove ol’ George wrong, so get out there and vote while you still can. You might not be able to soon.
Timothy Fitzpatrick can be contacted at
tfitzpatrick@kscequinox.com
