Election portal takes another step forward
Mar. 12—CONCORD — A new online portal for voters to begin the process to register or request an absentee ballot took one step closer to reality Tuesday.
Secretary of State David Scanlan proposed a minor change to the House-passed plan (HB 463) that would cost about $555,000 in the first year with roughly $170,000 in annual costs to maintain it.
"My belief is implementation of a voter portal should not change the current process for how a voter registers to vote," Scanlan told the Senate Election Laws and Municipal Affairs Committee.
"What it should do is streamline and cut down the time at the polling place and improve the data collection for the supervisors of the checklist and the town clerk."
Nonpartisan election reform groups have long sought this change for New Hampshire to join 42 states that let voters to begin the voter registration process remotely.
Autumn Raschick-Goodwin, program coordinator with Open Democracy, said this should reduce the amount of time local officials have to spend registering new voters either on election day or in the weeks leading up to a vote.
"This makes this a lot more efficient. Many people work during the hours that the town clerk is open, and this gets that ball rolling so they can arrange things more effectively," she said.
McKenzie St. Germain, state voting rights campaign director with America Votes, said a bipartisan amendment the House adopted makes clear a new voter using this portal must also prove age, identity and residency or domicile to register to vote.
"We can look to best practices" where officials in other states already accomplish this online, St. Germain said.
The legislation requires the portal be operational by May 1, 2026 in time for the next state election.
The House approved it, 195-172, on an unrecorded vote last January.
The change Scanlan proposed would strike from it verification of a voter's citizenship by a sworn statement.
Citizenship verification shouldn't changeScanlan said local election officials should verify citizenship as they do now when a new voter either goes to the city or town to register or shows up at the polls on election day and signs a qualified voter affidavit.
"Voters still have to physically sign the registration form when they vote for the first time or make a special trip to the clerk or supervisors of the checklist," Scanlan said.
No one opposed the bill during a public hearing Tuesday.
The election portal had bipartisan support in both the House and the Senate in 2023, but that effort fell apart when it became part of a tug of war between the two branches.
Senate Committee Chairman James Gray, R-Rochester, has for years sought an election portal, but the House last year tacked onto it legislation to allow cities and towns to apply to the state for some of the $12 million in federal Motor Voter Act money to replace their aging voting machines.
Last year, Gray opposed the voting machine legislation and the bill died when a House-Senate conference committee was unable to reach any agreement.
In January, the House approved a separate bill for the voting machines program (HB 447) that would let communities apply to spend no more than $3 million of the federal grants.
The measure also would require any town or city to pay at least one-half the cost of the new technology.
Last month, the Senate referred that separate bill to Gray's committee that will hold a public hearing on it later this spring.
