I like to play this game. I guess you could call it Red State Blue State. A bunch of governors or attorneys general send a letter to some federale in a Democratic administration, and my first question is, was mine one of those? Did we get involved in this thing? If we did, we’d behave like a Red State; if not, we’d be Blue.
The cute bit is that we don’t know what kind of state we are. New Hampshire elects a Republican (ish) governor and a Republican (ish) barely majority legislature (sometimes more but increasingly less) and Executive Council but can’t seem to elect a Republican to the US Congress. As one writer framed it, the little red state with the big blue crown. A state that has let out-of-state students and just about anyone here on election day vote here.
We don’t know what New Hampshire wants and never may until we stop letting people with driver’s licenses from other states pick our representatives, which we could call Democracy, but that’s not what anyone means, not even in the Live Free or Die State. Here, as it is increasingly elsewhere, Democracy means elites protecting institutions and their right to rule rather than individuals’ rights, Constitution be damned.
And look at that, so close to another election and sixteen AGs have written to The Homeland Minister to access federal resources to ensure that non-Americans are not voting in American elections. DHS has the database, and the states want to confirm eligibility, but the Feds won’t play along.
The States “indisputably ha[ve] a compelling interest in preserving the integrity of [their] election process[es].”2 Not only do the States have a sovereign duty to protect the franchise: they are statutorily obligated to do so.
Federal law prohibits States from processing noncitizen ballots or from accepting any voter registration application for federal elections without proof of government identification.3 States also must maintain a voter registration database and ensure that only citizens with valid government identification serve as electors.4
It is obvious that Alejandro Mayorkas’ Job is to protect the institutions from states and citizens, so he’s not likely to stop any foot-dragging in time to be helpful. The sixteen AGs know this, but political theater still matters, and my Attorney General isn’t one of the sixteen to sign the letter.
I know. He’s busy prosecuting port managers who object to developers wrecking the local fishing business and his wife (a soon-to-be former State Supreme Court Justice), who dared to challenge his being railroaded. The state has also wasted a good bit of time trying to figure out how to charge people for obstructing a public meeting no one obstructed (they had to dismiss all those arrests but are now getting sued by the citizens they tried to railroad).
Our AG has also been somewhat obsessed with finding a case that would allow the State of New Hampshire to use civil rights law to intimidate and suppress First Amendment expression -prosecuting speakers for hate speech (which isn’t even a real thing).
And who has time to check voter rolls for illegal non-citizen voters when you are constantly fighting the State’s inability or refusal to secure the chain of custody of ballots and election results or to follow its laws or Constitution when it comes to elections?
When it comes to election integrity, it’s a miracle we get any Republican elected, ever, and it is only a matter of time before the federal race problem poisons the down ticket well.
