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Voter ID OK: A little thing to guard a big right
We admit it felt a little silly to walk into the polling station on Primary Day and, after saying hello by name to several of the election officials and being addressed accordingly, being asked for the first time for some identification.
Silly, perhaps, but certainly not offensive or uncomfortable.
Many of us in New Hampshire are longtime residents, with community ties going way back; others of us are either newcomers or people so busy with our hurried lives that we no longer know even our next-door neighbors.
New Hampshire has long been unusual among New England states in that more than half our residents are from somewhere else. If not refugees from foreign lands, then we are often tax refugees from other states.
And if we think there are strangers voting here, imagine what it must be like in huge states such as Florida or in big cities like New York or Dallas.
Some New Hampshire Democrats apparently protested the new voter ID law (which takes effect in the general election this November) by refusing to provide an ID. We also heard, more than once, that while one needs an ID to board a plane or attend a convention, those things “aren’t in the Constitution.”
Well. The Constitution gives qualified citizens the right to vote. It says nothing about how those citizens choose to protect that precious and important right from fraud.
The citizens of New Hampshire, through their elected representatives, have now done what citizens in many other states (including President Obama’s home state of Hawaii, where Republicans are an exotic species) have done to further protect elections.
There is no good reason to oppose voter ID. There are certainly reasons to wonder why some do.
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