Senate Republicans Approve Irresponsible Elections Legislation
Contact Name: Marina Altschiller
Phone: (603) 271-3207
CONCORD – Today, Senate Republicans concurred with the House amended version of Senate Bill 89, legislation relative to various election procedures. As a result of this action, the bill will now head to the Governor’s desk. Originally, the bill included language allowing cities and towns to participate in partial pre-processing of absentee ballots. This critical provision was stripped by the House.
After the vote, Senate Democratic Leader Donna Soucy (D-Manchester) and Senator Rebecca Perkins Kwoka (D-Portsmouth) issued the following statement:
“After the last election, we heard loud and clear from local election officials that they wanted to make permanent their ability to partially pre-process absentee ballots. This was a measure put into practice during the 2020 election cycle to ease the burden for local election officials processing absentee ballots, with hugely successful results. As amended by the House, that critical provision has been stripped from the bill. Beyond this, as amended by the House, SB 89 seeks to circumvent any potentially forthcoming federal election reform by saying that New Hampshire would not comply with any federal changes. This effectively opens the door to New Hampshire having to run double elections, needlessly creating duplicative work for state and local election officials, driving up election costs and leaving local property taxpayers to foot the bill. This legislation is irresponsible and does nothing to respond to the very real needs voiced by our hardworking local election officials.”
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