Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

College students at heart of voting rights fight in New Hampshire primary

Sen. Bernie Sanders at St. Anselm College

Sen. Bernie Sanders is hoping for another round of strong support from young voters, but in New Hampshire there is confusion over the voting rights for college students from other states.

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

A day ahead of the New Hampshire primary, college kids are in the center of both the main voting rights fight and concern about confusion at the polls.

The issue is what students from out of state must do in order to vote legally in the first straightforward election of the 2020 Democratic presidential contest. The rules were changed by state law two years ago, with some Republican legislators saying their aim was to make it tougher for young people who grew up outside the Granite State to take part.

But civil rights groups, led by the American Civil Liberties Union, are encouraging every American citizen who's at least 18 years old and wakes up in New Hampshire on Tuesday to head to the polls — potentially causing anger and delays if election judges seek to turn them away.


Some demographic studies project that people younger than 35 will make up the biggest voting bloc by age this year, surpassing people older than 65. Democrats have moved aggressively to corral the youth vote nationally, and Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont rounded up an outsized share as part of his strong showing in Iowa.

Now he and Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts are counting most on strong turnouts by college students to boost their fortunes in New Hampshire. Reports that those voters are being blocked could cause a second wave of furor aimed at the presidential nominating process less than a week after the collapse of the results tabulation process in Iowa.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

Students count for as much as 10 percent of the state's eligible voters but a majority come from out of state — and not only at private colleges like Dartmouth, St. Anselm and Franklin Pierce. Half the students at the University of New Hampshire went to high school in another state.

The lack of certainty about their voting rights has been fed by the unresolved status of the ACLU's lawsuits challenging the 2018 law.

The new statute appears at first glance to change the rules for establishing residency in the state, a prerequisite to voting. One suit, on which the state Supreme Court will hear arguments a month from now, asks whether the law explicitly requires people who vote to first obtain a New Hampshire driver's license and vehicle registration — an expensive and inconvenient process that few college students are readily inclined to pursue.

If the court says they must get the documentation in order to exercise their franchise, then the ACLU will press its claim in federal court that the new law amounts to an unconstitutional poll tax.

A four-page document of "frequently asked questions about establishing a domicile / residence in New Hampshire" has been sent to all 301 polling places by the state's attorney general, secretary of state and motor vehicle department head. But it appears to offer some confusing if not contradictory guidance.

The ACLU is telling students who grew up outside New Hampshire to claim they have the right to both register and vote Tuesday by pairing their out-of-state driver licenses with their student IDs and piece of mail addressed to their campus addresses.

Henry Klementowicz of the ACLU says that advice is based on other statutes suggesting that people who consider New Hampshire their home may vote without a state driver's license or vehicle registration. Besides, he said, the very act of registering to vote is one of the requirements under state law for establishing residence.

Also, he and other critics of the law note, voters cannot be compelled to get a New Hampshire license if they don't drive in the state, and they cannot re-register a car they're driving if it's owned by someone (their parents, for example) who doesn't live in the state.

The law was written by a Republican Legislature and signed by GOP Gov. Chris Sununu. The Republicans said they were less worried about the presidential primary (which is open to all, regardless of party) than about a surge of liberal-leaning students from other states tipping the balance of power in New Hampshire. And, in fact, in the 2018 midterm (when the new residency law was not applied) the Legislature flipped to Democratic control.

Democrat Bill Gardner, the longest-serving secretary of state in the country, said the law is defensible because it ends New Hampshire's status as the "only state in the country where you do not have to be a resident to vote."

Read More

Person dropping off a ballot

An Arizona voter drops off a ballot at the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center on Election Day 2022.

Eric Thayer for The Washington Post via Getty Images

Are there hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants on Arizona’s voter rolls?

This fact brief was originally published by the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting. Read the original here. Fact briefs are published by newsrooms in the Gigafact network, and republished by The Fulcrum. Visit Gigafact to learn more.

Are there hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants on Arizona’s voter rolls?

No.

There is no evidence to suggest that thousands of undocumented immigrants are registered on Arizona’s voter rolls. Non-citizen voting has been found to be exceedingly rare.

Keep ReadingShow less
Why toddlers are motivating an early school educator to vote

Maira Gonzalez works with students in the preschool and after-school program associated with First United Methodist Church in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

Mark Macias

Why toddlers are motivating an early school educator to vote

Macias, a former journalist with NBC and CBS, owns the public relations agency Macias PR. He lives in South Florida with his wife and two children, ages 4 and 1.

The Fulcrum presents We the People, a series elevating the voices and visibility of the persons most affected by the decisions of elected officials. In this first installment, we explore the motivations of over 36 million eligible Latino voters as they prepare to make their voices heard in November.

Florida is home to the third largest population of Hispanics, Latinos. In a recent survey of Florida Latino voters by UnidosUS 2024, Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris(47%) leads Republican Donald Trump (42%).

__________

Maira Gonzalez vividly remembers the 2000 presidential election in Florida, and today, she sees many similarities.

“I see a pattern between Bush and Trump,” Gonzalez said. “It’s not fair what they were doing years ago and now. I understand there is a lot of crime with immigrants, but they’re blaming it all on Latins. They’re all being lumped together. Just like we have good Americans and bad Americans, it’s the same with Latins. I’m bilingual, so I see both sides, but you can’t blame Latin immigrants for everything.”

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

Keep ReadingShow less
Federal Reserve building
Hisham Ibrahim/Getty Images

Project 2025: The Federal Reserve

Hill was policy director for the Center for Humane Technology, co-founder of FairVote and political reform director at New America. You can reach him on X @StevenHill1776.

This is part of a series offering a nonpartisan counter to Project 2025, a conservative guideline to reforming government and policymaking during the first 180 days of a second Trump administration. The Fulcrum's cross partisan analysis of Project 2025 relies on unbiased critical thinking, reexamines outdated assumptions, and uses reason, scientific evidence, and data in analyzing and critiquing Project 2025.

Few federal agencies are as misunderstood by the general public as the little known Federal Reserve Board. The Fed, as it is known, oversees the central banking system of the United States. That means it superintends many of the most crucial levers for making the economy run, including maintaining the stability of the financial system, supervising and regulating banks, moderating interest rates and prices, maximizing employment and more. Often when Congress is too politically polarized and paralyzed to fiscally stimulate the economy, many look to the Fed for faster executive action.

Keep ReadingShow less
Hulk Hogan tearing off his shirt

Hulk Hogan was part of a testosterone-fueled script for the Republican National Committee.

Jason Almond/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

Manhood is on the ballot, as if politics isn't crazy enough

Page is an American journalist, syndicated columnist and senior member of the Chicago Tribune editorial board.

In case you somehow haven’t noticed, manhood is on the ballot.

Even before President Joe Biden stepped aside to let Vice President Kamala Harris step up to be the Democrats’ presidential nominee, insiders from both parties were calling this the “boys vs. girls election.”

And even before the Republican National Convention opened in Milwaukee in July, spokesmen for Team Trump were telling reporters they hoped to contrast “weak vs. strong” as their social media message — and present a stage show as testosterone-fueled as a Super Bowl.

Keep ReadingShow less
Blue donkey and red elephant facing off
kbeis/Getty Images

Why Democrats hate Texas and Republicans detest California

Klug served in the House of Representatives from 1991 to 1999. He hosts the political podcast “Lost in the Middle: America’s Political Orphans.”

A few years ago, a class of senior honors students at the University of Louisville learned firsthand the harsh reality of political stereotypes. They developed an ad for a hypothetical candidate running for Congress to get the reaction of 1,500 randomly selected people across the country. Two versions were created from the same script, using two different actors. One with a Southern accent, the other with the flat Midwestern delivery.

The students asked a couple of questions: Do you think this person is trustworthy, intelligent? Would you vote for this person? What political viewpoint would you ascribe to this person?

The students were taken aback when the Southern speaker got trashed.

Keep ReadingShow less