Sununu signs bill requiring passport, birth certificate, or other hard-document proof of citizenship to vote in New Hampshire

Outgoing governor of New Hampshire Chris Sununu signed legislation this week requiring would-be New Hampshire voters to present their birth certificate, passport or other documents proving citizenship in order to register, changes which voting rights experts have called “the most restrictive in the country.”

House Bill 1569 seeks to eliminate the existing option for individuals to sign a sworn affidavit when registering to vote, instead requiring them to present not just physical proof of identity but U.S. citizenship — documents like a birth certificate or a passport — even if registering on election day.

The bill would take effect just days after the November 2024 election.

Critics have said this bill could disenfranchise as many as 1 in 10 New Hampshire voters who currently do not possess or are able to locate the documents this bill requires, imposing an incredibly high bar for registering to vote in the state of New Hampshire.

Republicans said the bill was necessary to prevent noncitizen voting from taking place, an issue driven entirely by conspiracy theories widely circulated by Donald Trump and his supporters. A similar law in Arizona was so extreme it was recently rejected by the far-right U.S. Supreme Court.

New Hampshire Democratic leaders at every level condemned the bill for the guarantee the law will have in disenfranchising New Hampshire voters.

“By signing this bill into law, Governor Sununu and New Hampshire Republicans are actively making it more difficult for Granite Staters to register to vote to make their voices heard in our elections and our democracy…Discouraging participation in our democracy is as anti-American as it can get,” said Senator Jeanne Shaheen 

“Nearly every election cycle, Republicans make unsubstantiated claims of widespread ‘voter fraud’ in New Hampshire to justify new restrictions on voting rights that they claim will solve the problem.  Despite reports from the Secretary of State’s office after every election debunking their outlandish claims, and a 2022 Special Committee on Voter Confidence report which recommended no changes to the affidavit process, Republicans continue to rinse and repeat with their next effort to further disenfranchise New Hampshire voters,” said State House Democratic Leader Matt Wilhelm in a statement after the law was signed.

This week’s winner of the NH02 congressional primary Maggie Goodlander, an attorney who pressed New Hampshire Secretary of State David Scanlan to oppose HB1569 when she filed for office, said “this extreme legislation will disenfranchise voters and burden our election officials.”

RELATED: Need your birth certificate to vote? This GOP bill will require it in NH

The bill is part of a trend of national legislation meant to combat noncitizen voting (which there are already laws against) that has the additional effect of disenfranchising many young voters, voters of color, and working-class voters who are thought to have a higher tendency to vote for Democrats, while also having the effect of tacitly justifying Trump’s January 6th insurrection on the capitol.

Disgraced former New Hampshire lawmaker Ross Berry alluded to as much in comments on social media.

“Why is it the Democrats think that people who can’t prove citizenship would be more likely to vote for them?” Berry said, implying New Hampshire Democrats rely on non-citizen votes in elections, a claim disputed by New Hampshire voting officials such as the Secretary of State, Republican David Scanlan.

Notably absent from commenting, Republican gubernatorial candidate Kelly Ayotte, who has made no public comment on the bill. 

McKenzie Taylor, Campaign Director for the New Hampshire Campaign for Voting Rights said that while this legislation would not impact November’s election, it does present clear and present risk for Granite State voters.

“It is imperative that all Granite Staters know that for the November 2024 election, our laws do not change and voters may register to vote by signing affidavits if they do not otherwise have the required documents … This extreme legislation signed by the Governor will roll back voting access for all eligible Granite Staters. Once this law goes into effect later this year, any voter may be turned away from the polls if they did not have the correct documents, creating massive new changes to New Hampshire’s registration system, burdening our election officials, and disenfranchising eligible voters.”

New Hampshire voting laws and accessibility already lag badly behind other states, not allowing online voter registration or automatic voter registration, designed to make voting more accessible. Republicans have also frequently moved to curtail the voting rights of college students in the state.