Concord Loses Nearly 6,700 Voters

A voter purge by the last week removed nearly 6,700 people from the city’s registration checklist, according to Concord City Clerk Janice Bonenfant.

Bonenfant said Concord residents who had not voted in the last four elections received a letter informing them that they needed to come into the clerk’s office to re-register or be stricken from the voter rolls. Thousands of letters came back from the U.S. Postal Service as undeliverable, she said. Many others did not report into the office to re-register either, she said.

“If they did not come back in to register to vote by Aug. 31, they were purged off the checklist,” she said.

The purge removed 6,689 voters from the checklist, according to Bonenfant, lowering the number of registered voters in Concord by nearly 22 percent, from 30,625 down to 23,936.

The four election cycles includes both municipal and federal elections so, essentially, the purge could happen every four years. In the case of 2011, it was a year where city officials voter wards in Concord, based on the decennial U.S. Census.

The Census raised Concord’s population to 42,695, or about 2,000 more than the 2000 Census. Bonenfant said there were many different factors for the reduction in voter registration while the population grew.

“I think a lot of names that got purged off the checklist were people who passed away,” she said. “If people didn’t pass away in the state of New Hampshire, we wouldn’t necessarily know that."

Bonenfant added that if a person moved to another state and registered to vote in that location, there were no guarantees that the clerk in the new community would inform her office of the change.

"A lot of people moved out of the city and we were not notified that they perhaps re-registered somewhere else outside of the state of New Hampshire," she said. "So, it’s a variety of things, honestly ... it’s quite interesting.”

The change in the number of registered voters in Concord will automatically improve the turnout numbers for the city, especially in historically low municipal election cycles, Bonenfant noted.

In November 2009, the last city election, for example, 10.9 percent of the registered voters in Concord participated, even though there were contested races for contest at-large city council, one ward race, a state representative race covering four wards, and a school board seat. There were also four people running for three at-large school board seats although one candidate removed himself from contention even though he remained on the ballot. Using the new numbers, the actual turnout was probably closer to 14 percent.

In November 2007, 20.3 percent participated when there were contested races for mayor, at-large city council seats, and one ward seat. Those turnout figures would have only been slightly higher with the new voter registration figures. The voter registration number was about 27,185 at that time.

In the 2008 presidential election, voter registration was 29,343, with 76 percent voting, according to the city’s website.

The 2010 mid-term federal election turnout was recorded as 48.9 percent when it was probably closer to 62 percent, based on the new checklist, with voter registration numbers around 30,500, or close to what it was in 2000.

According to the latest data, Ward 5 hosts the largest number of registered Democrats while the most “undeclared” or independents and Republicans are registered in Ward 10. Ward 2 has the fewest Democrats while Ward 6 has the fewest registered Republicans. Ward 3 has the fewest number of registered independents.