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Veto in N.H. for permanent switch to no-excuse voting by mail

Chris Sununu

The veto was by GOP Gov. Chris Sununu, although he is allowing fear of the coronavirus as a valid reason to vote absentee through November.

Shannon Finney/Getty Images
Sara Swann
By Sara SwannJul 13, 2020
Sara Swann

As a staff writer, Sara covers a variety of democracy reform issues, including voting rights, money in politics, gerrymandering and civic education. Prior to joining The Fulcrum in May 2019, Sara reported on local government on Maryland's Eastern Shore for the USA Today network. She is a native West Virginian and a graduate of Syracuse University.

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The switch to no-excuse absentee voting in New Hampshire will not outlive the pandemic.

Three months ago, Gov. Chris Sununu used his executive power to declare that fear of catching the coronavirus is a valid reason to vote by mail in the Sept. 8 primary and Nov. 3 general election. But on Friday he vetoed a measure that would have eliminated the excuse requirement and allowed all voters to cast ballots by mail indefinitely.

Since March, 35 states have made changes to expand mail voting in light of the Covid-19 pandemic, but almost all of these adjustments are temporary and will only last through the November election.

New Hampshire will remain one of 16 states requiring a specific reason to receive an absentee ballot. It's also among just nine states that do not permit people to register to vote online — which also would have changed under the vetoed measure.

The bill also would have allowed local election officials to start tabulating mailed ballots before the polls close on Election Day, which is permitted in about half the states, and would have had the state become the 31st to join the Electronic Registration Information Center, which helps states maintain voter rolls.

The package was cleared by the Democratic legislature without sufficient votes for an override. The Republican governor called it a "partisan wish list of unreasonable and unnecessary provisions" and said the authors were seeking "to take advantage of a global pandemic to fundamentally and permanently weaken New Hampshire's election system."

During almost four years as governor, Sununu has opposed most election and political reform efforts in Concord, especially since Democrats won control of both the state House and Senate in 2018. But he was among the first GOP governors to use his own powers to make voting easier in light of Covid-19.

He faces a competitive race for re-election this fall.

"Rather than allowing New Hampshire, a state that prides itself on commitment and participation in the democratic process, to move forward, Sununu has chosen once again to hold up unreliable, antiquated systems that systemically put up roadblocks for new voters," said Democratic state Sen. Melanie Levesque, one of the package's authors.


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Private Prisons and ICE Exploit Loopholes, Harm Communities

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(Photo by Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images)

Private Prisons and ICE Exploit Loopholes, Harm Communities

While Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) terrorizes Black and brown communities with racial profiling, kidnappings, inhumane treatment, fatal abuse, and killings, private prison investors are asking how ICE can detain more people to increase their profits. Private prison corporations have long profited from immigration enforcement, but they are expecting a financial windfall under the current administration. These corporations are politically and financially situated to rapidly increase detention capacity and cash in on the president’s goal of deporting one million people per year. Stopping these corporations from lining politicians’ campaign coffers is a necessary first step in ensuring that our government is accountable to the people it serves, rather than the corporations it contracts with.

ICE and private prison corporations have long had a symbiotic relationship. Ninety percent of ICE's detainees were already being held in facilities owned or operated by private prison corporations before President Trump began his second term. CoreCivic and GEO Group, two of the largest private prison corporations that lead the multi-billion dollar industry, have been contracting with immigration enforcement for decades. By 2023, ICE contracts accounted for 43 percent of CoreCivic’s revenue and 30 percent of GEO Group’s revenue. The majority of each corporation’s lobbyists have held government positions, and GEO Group’s board of directors “has extensive links with ICE.” The relationship between private prisons and ICE is the embodiment of the “'revolving door’ between the federal government and the private sector.”

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As live sporting events go, nothing comes close to the World Cup. I was in the stands when South Africa, my birth country, hosted the event in 2010 after decades of exclusion from global athletics. In June of this year, I had a full-circle moment when South Africa played in the knockout rounds for the first time, and I stood with my two American sons, arms around them, singing South Africa's anthem — the only national anthem that weaves multiple languages into a single, unifying song. Later in the week, I was in the stands again, cheering Spain's win over Austria, a country to which my only connections are a brief holiday…and the fact that my mother's family fled from there during the Inquisition.

The magic of the World Cup is that everyone in the stands wears the flags and shirts of countries that are “theirs” in some way. For some, it’s where they were born; for others, where they live or where their ancestors hailed from. For some, it is simply a country they have adopted for the afternoon. It is impossible to know how deep a person’s connection runs simply by looking at them. And next to a person waving one team’s colors is a stranger, family member, or close friend supporting the opposing team—or wearing the jersey of a team that isn’t playing that day at all.

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