The following summary is based on an advisory opinion of the New Hampshire Supreme Court rather than an ordinary opinion. In this opinion, the Supreme Court has provided answers to questions asked by the New Hampshire legislature about the constitutionality of a bill that was before the legislature.
Based upon a resolution from the New Hampshire Senate, the Supreme Court offered an advisory opinion on the text of proposed SB 21, which would have permitted persons aged 17 to vote in state and federal primary elections so long as they will have reached the age of 18 by the time of the general election involving those candidates for office. In a prior advisory opinion, Opinion of the Justices (Voting Age in Primaries), 157 N.H. 265 (2008), the court had held that such a provision would violate Part 1, Article 11 of the N.H. Constitution, as such voters would not have met the stated requirement of being aged 18 prior to exercising the right to vote in these elections.
This opinion dealt with an issue left open in the prior case: whether such a restriction on age violated the right of political parties to associate that is guaranteed by Part 1, Article 32 of the N.H. Constitution, as well as the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. The Court found that under both constitutions, the right to associate for political purposes, while broad, is not absolute. Political parties have the right to associate and select a standard bearer utilizing their own processes and rules, but they have no right to determine the qualifications of voters. As a result, neither the state nor the federal constitutions support a result that allows a statute or a political party to alter the basic qualifications of voters as set forth in the N.H. Constitution.