Six organizations, including Count Every Hero, sent a letter to the Governor of New Hampshire urging her to veto S.B. 287, a bill that will severely restrict voting access for military service members, veterans, voters with disabilities, and senior citizens.
Concord, NH – Count Every Hero, along with five other organizations, called on Governor Kelly Ayotte to maintain voting access for absentee voters by vetoing S.B. 287. In the letter, the coalition emphasized the unnecessary and burdensome new requirements S.B. 287 would pose to New Hampshire voters while also weakening local election integrity and placing new costly burdens on municipal clerks.
The coalition — which also includes the Secure Families Initiative, The Chamberlain Network, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, Veterans For All Voters, and Secure Democracy USA — warned that the new bill will make it more difficult for military and overseas voters to cast a ballot by imposing new requirements that will be difficult for active-duty service members and their families to complete while stationed abroad. In the letter, the coalition also warned that S.B. 287 will require veterans, voters with disabilities, and senior citizens to navigate a complex government bureaucracy in order to vote while failing to recognize the safeguards that currently exist to prevent fraudulent voting.
The letter noted that the new bill will place unnecessary, costly, and redundant mandates on elections clerks to merely receive an absentee ballot despite the sufficiency of current voting laws to verify voter identity. The coalition urged Governor Ayotte to “work toward solutions that respect the service and dignity of all Granite Staters — especially those who have given the most for our country or face the greatest barriers to the ballot box.”
