Let me see if I have this right: SB 3, which clarifies the process by which some people — mainly non-resident college students — can vote in New Hampshire, has been set aside (temporarily, at least) by a Superior Court judge because these students might have trouble reading the new affidavit specified by the law, which apparently is written at too high a reading level.
Too high a reading level. For college students.
Specifically, the new affidavit places an ‘unreasonable and discriminatory’ burden on those students because — in the judge’s words — it ‘reads like a statute’.
So a statute can’t be a valid statute… if it reads like one? What are the alternatives?
The judge was concerned that these students might feel pressured, trying to read the affidavit while other people waited in line behind them. (He expects that they would wait until the last possible moment to read it, rather than finding some time in the months of September and October to look it over at their leisure.)
On the one hand, this is one of the best illustrations yet of (1) just how low our expectations of students have sunk, and (2) just how dysfunctional the relationship between the judiciary and the other branches of government has become.
But on the other hand, if we take this ruling seriously — not that anyone should, but if we did — it would lead directly to an interesting conclusion.
Following the judge’s reasoning, we should immediately set aside all other statutes that ‘read like statutes’. Which is… all of them. Basically, the judge has declared that the whole of the New Hampshire Revised Statutes Annotated places an ‘unreasonable and discriminatory’ burden on the people of the state. After all, if even college students can’t be required to read a statute, how can anyone else be expected to?
Comical aspects aside, I’m actually happy about one aspect of the case, which is that among the grounds on which the plaintiffs asked the law to be invalidated was that the law is ‘void for vagueness’. I’ve long thought that for people who are interested in regaining their freedom, this concept could turn out to be the key to everything.
