Gov. Kelly Ayotte vetoed a bill Tuesday that would allow school districts to choose to conduct partisan elections, arguing it would divide residents.
House Bill 356 would allow residents in school districts to vote to propose a warrant article to make school board elections partisan, meaning candidates would be identified by political party. That article would require a simple majority to adopt; eliminating it later would also require a simple majority.
The bill would also allow school board members in each party to caucus in private without being subjected to the state’s right-to-know law, which currently prevents board members from meeting in private without officially going into a nonpublic session.
Rep. Robert Wherry, a Hudson Republican and the prime sponsor of the bill, argued a partisan ballot system would “provide additional information on the school district elections to the voters, which should increase voter awareness and voter turnout.”
But Ayotte disagreed.
“Local school board elections are run properly and in a nonpartisan manner, and there is no need to fix a system that is not broken,” Ayotte wrote in her veto message Tuesday. “Making these local elections into partisan fights will create unnecessary division between Granite Staters.”
New Hampshire law currently allows partisan elections for town or city officials if voters pass a warrant article to do so. But observers say no towns have chosen to do so.
The veto is Ayotte’s third since taking office. In June, she vetoed House Bill 319, which would remove the requirement for school districts to provide transportation for half-day kindergarten programs. And this month, she vetoed House Bill 781, a bill that would ban cell phones in K-12 schools. A different version of that legislation, which has been championed by Ayotte, passed into law as part of the budget trailer bill last month.
Lawmakers will meet later this year for “Veto Day,” in which they will vote on whether to overturn Ayotte’s vetoes. They will need a two-thirds majority vote in both the House and Senate to do so.
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