Priorities USA Launches Digital Campaign Opposing New Hampshire’s Latest Voter Suppression Effort
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
December 27, 2017
Contact: Symone D. Sanders, [email protected]
Priorities USA Launches Digital Campaign Opposing New Hampshire’s Latest Voter Suppression Effort
Facebook Ads Will Urge Voters to Call on Their Elected Officials to Oppose HB 372
Washington — Today, Priorities USA announced a digital campaign urging New Hampshire voters to call their elected officials and demand that they oppose HB 372, the legislature’s latest disenfranchisement effort that will primarily affect military voters and college students. Ads will run in the districts of four key state senators alongside a statewide campaign calling on voters to contact Governor Chris Sununu, who was recorded on video pledging never to support anything that would suppress the right to vote for students.
The ads, which are running on Facebook, will provide voters with the information they need to contact their elected officials. Specifically, the campaign will target voters in the districts of the following state senators:
- Senator James Gray (SD 6)
- Senator Dan Innis (SD 24)
- Senator John Reagan (SD 17)
- Senator Ruth Ward (SD 8)
Voters throughout the state will also see advertisements urging them to contact Governor Sununu. For examples of the ads that are running beginning today, click here and here.
HB 372 creates a number of new barriers to voting for New Hampshire’s college students and military community. If enacted into law, prospective voters would need to obtain a New Hampshire driver’s license and pay costly license, registration and administration fees that can add up to hundreds of dollars. This added layer of cost and complexity would particularly affect out-of-state college students and military service members stationed in the state, all of whom contribute to New Hampshire’s civic life but for whom these new burdensome requirements would be a strong deterrent to voting.
“Nothing should prevent any American from exercising their fundamental right to cast a ballot—certainly not age, economic status or service in our armed forces,” said Patrick McHugh, Executive Director of Priorities USA. “It is extraordinarily troubling that New Hampshire’s legislature is considering a bill seemingly designed to create a new poll tax and ensure that fewer people vote. Priorities is committed to fighting voter suppression efforts like this and to holding Governor Sununu accountable on his promise not to support such a suppressive bill.”
This campaign comes on the heels of the Priorities USA Foundation’s support of a lawsuit against New Hampshire’s SB 3, which has already yielded a temporary restraining order on that law’s punitive effects and which is slated for a full trial in August 2018. The Priorities USA Foundation is also sponsoring a lawsuit in Indiana against a state law mandating precinct consolidation in one of Indiana’s most heavily African-American and Hispanic counties.