Committee hears debate over SB 287, which would require ID or notarization for some absentee mailings

Senate Election Law and Municipal Affairs Committee members heard competing views on Senate Bill 287 on the question of requiring a photo identification or notarized signature when an absentee ballot is requested to be mailed to an address other than the voter’s registration address.

Sponsor Senator Howard Pearl, R-District 17, told the committee “we had a very clear directive from the voters last fall that election integrity was important,” and said the bill would require a voter who asks that an absentee ballot be mailed to a different address to “provide either a photo ID or a notarized signature that you are who you are and you’re asking for this ballot to be mailed to you.”

The bill’s backers pointed to a 2016 review of absentee requests that identified many absentee ballots mailed to the same out-of-state addresses as a reason to tighten verification for that subset of applications. Representative Greg Hill, chair of the House Legislative Administration Committee, described the HAVA-related data and said the study found “in the 2016 election, 14,418 absentee ballots were mailed in this fashion, to addresses outside New Hampshire,” and that some single addresses received multiple ballots. Hill added the data point did not prove fraud but…