BYLINE: Adam Urquhart, Granite State News Collaborative 

College voter registration efforts have continued despite the challenging circumstances the Covid-19 pandemic has placed upon campuses across the state.

In just two weeks New Hampshire residents and college students alike will head to their polling locations to cast their ballots in the Nov. 3 General Election if they haven’t already submitted an absentee ballot. 

“We saw a dramatically increased usage of the absentee voting process in the Primary and I anticipate that we will see that again in the General Election,” Henry Klementowicz, staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of New Hampshire (cq) said.

Klementowicz said that the Covid-19 pandemic has broadly changed a lot about how the election process is going to play out, citing how the legislature passed a law saying that anyone can vote absentee during the pandemic because of any concerns related to Covid-19. 

As of Oct. 20, there have been 200,834 absentee ballots requested for the General Election, and of those, 136,137 have been returned to town or city clerks. 

For college students participating in this upcoming election as first-time voters, they must first be registered to vote. Many colleges and universities around the state have set up opportunities for students to register to vote. 

With regard to college voter registration efforts during the pandemic, Deputy Secretary of State David Scanlan (cq) said that what he has seen is college towns are pretty healthy this year and that the pandemic does not seem to have slowed that process down at all. For some of the smaller towns in New Hampshire that are home to sizable college campuses like Durham and Hanover, students make up a large percentage of the population. 

Scanlan said that the local election officials in the college towns have been creating special opportunities for students to be able to register to vote by setting up registration opportunities.

“Some of them have been by appointment, others have just been a certain day with proper social distancing, but it does it appear that the number of registration in the college towns is healthy this year,” Scanlan said. 

An individual can register to vote up until 5 p.m. on the day of the Nov. 3 election as well as at their polling place in the town or city ward where they are domiciled.

College students studying in New Hampshire are able to choose their voting domicile, whether that be the one they held before coming to the state or the one which was established while here for school but, they can only select one. According to www.citizenscount.org, college students in and from New Hampshire have a couple options to choose from for casting their vote, either voting in their home state using an absentee ballot, or voting in person in the state they attend school. 

According to votenh2020.org, a website operated by the American Civil Liberties Union of New Hampshire, “A domicile is a place that a person treats as a permanent home, or feels most comfortable in. If you are a college student, your domicile will likely be your dorm or off-campus residence.”

A list of documents that can be used to prove one's domicile when registering to vote can be found here. 

Additionally, students should be aware that establishing a domicile in New Hampshire can impact things such as registering vehicles and driver’s licensing. Further information is available on the Secretary of State website. 

These articles are being shared by partners in The Granite State News Collaborative. For more information visit collaborativenh.org.