Democrats sue New Hampshire over GOP-backed election law

The Democratic National Committee is suing New Hampshire officials over a Republican-backed election law that it claims will disenfranchise voters and have a chilling effect on key members of the party’s base in 2024.

The challenge, which was shared first with POLITICO, takes on a law passed last year that requires people who register and vote on Election Day without a photo ID to send in missing documentation to the state within seven days.

If they don’t, their votes will be thrown out and they’ll be referred to the state Attorney General’s office.

President Joe Biden’s campaign is backing the lawsuit. Senior officials on the team said they are concerned the legislation could affect critical voting blocs in the battleground state in the 2024 election, especially young people, college students and low-income voters.

“President Biden and Vice President Harris believe that we should be making it easier, not harder, for every eligible American voter to participate in our democracy. New Hampshire’s law flies in the face of that belief, and is a chilling and unacceptable embrace of the election fraud hysteria championed by Donald Trump,” said Biden campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez. “In an election that could very well determine the fate of our democracy, it is our imperative to fight for the right to vote. This is just the beginning.”

Biden campaign officials said that 75,000 voters in New Hampshire registered in person and voted on Election Day in 2020. It is not clear how many of those people registered without an ID, since at the time, those voters could still cast a regular ballot as long as they filled out a form that attested to their identity.

But a senior Biden campaign aide, who was granted anonymity to