The NH AG’s Elections Unit is once again confusing the issue of non-domiciled college students using NH just to vote and go to school, without all the other responsibilities of a lawful citizen.
Related: Who Can Vote? for the One-Hundredth Time…
This could have all been settled once and for all if the two kids at Dartmouth that the NH ACLU used as plaintiffs in Casey / Flaherty vs Gardner / MacDonald had followed through on their Federal Court case – instead of amending it and then dropping it.
Remember the Coalition of NH Taxpayers, through me, filed a Motion to Intervene laying out the history of college students voting in NH without being domiciled.
The judge denied the motion and suggested refiling as an Amicus Brief. I decided to simply let a federal judge try and make the case they can let out of state college students vote in NH – again, legally.
They had voted in NH in 2018 and never became legally domiciled. In the case, they state they are keeping their Arkansas and California driver’s licenses. Both states have state income taxes for which the plaintiffs would be liable.
It was shocking to me that a court even took the case from non-citizens and I was hoping the court would send them packing. But they withdrew before the judge could render a decision before November 3, 2020. I saw this recent attempt to get a Federal court to go along with non-citizens voting as an opportunity to stop NH from encouraging non-citizen voting.
Here is what the plaintiffs have to say about their “residency” if you can believe it:
“C. These lawsuits
The individual plaintiffs, Caroline Casey and Maggie Flaherty, filed their complaint in mid-February 2019, and the New Hampshire Democratic Party filed its complaint two weeks later. These complaints were identical except for the paragraphs describing the plaintiffs. Casey and Flaherty are students at Dartmouth College who both wish to vote in New Hampshire while attending the school but do not intend to remain in New Hampshire after graduation. They currently have driver’s licenses from other states, and both registered to vote in New Hampshire in 2018. They allege that they will suffer injury if they must incur the expense and trouble of obtaining New Hampshire driver’s licenses. Neither alleges that they own a vehicle, so their claims do not implicate the requirement to register a vehicle in New Hampshire.”
Right in their pleadings they state, with no hesitation, they intend to keep out-of-state driver’s licenses. And they already registered here in 2018 and I assume voted as well. In English, that means – the girls are NOT NH citizens and are required to vote absentee back in California and Arkansas.
This is so simple it is almost stupid.
Casey and Flaherty, in my opinion, just like other college students in the past, were duped into being plaintiffs in a no-win case designed to stall any decision about non-domiciled students and hundreds of campaign workers every election. Some examples: Mary Katherine Lowndes, Geoff Wetrosky, Alana Biden, Caitlin Ann Legaki, Kate Bedingfield, Carl Robert Gibson, Hugo Palma, and we will see, maybe at trial, Michael LaSean Lewis.
If the NH ACLU lawyers and the two from NY were so sure they had a case for a Federal Judge agreeing with non-domiciled voters being allowed to use NH only for voting purposes, why withdraw your case? The NH AG’s Office is known for losing cases by what appears to be – on purpose. That assumption by me is based on judges asking why, in the past, NH didn’t make all the arguments to which NH citizens are entitled. See: Newburger v. Peterson, 1972. Read the last two paragraphs about how NH voters who are still regarded as citizens of other states have no right to vote here.
The Feds should step in and make a case against two separate sets of voters in NH- domiciled, and drive-by voters.
NH is a cesspool of illegal voting. It has been for years. The NH AG should take a broom to the Elections Unit. There is no such thing as two different classes of voters any more than there can be different public drinking fountains for different people.
Voting is a right reserved for lawful citizens. The burden is on out-of-state campaign workers and students to vote absentee.
