The office of New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella issued a cease-and-desist order to the Democratic National Committee (DNC) on Monday after the committee purportedly violated the state’s voter suppression laws.
On Jan. 5, the co-chairs of the DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee submitted a letter to the New Hampshire Democratic Party (NHDP) demanding the state party comply with DNC guidance to “take steps to educate the public that January 23rd” — the date set for the jurisdiction’s Democrat presidential primary — “is a non-binding presidential preference event and is meaningless and the NHDP and presidential candidates should take all steps possible not to participate.”
The memo came nearly a year after the DNC passed a new early presidential primary calendar for 2024. The updated calendar, supported by President Biden, sought to make South Carolina the first state on the Democrat presidential primary schedule. While Iowa and New Hampshire, respectively, have historically marked the first electoral contests in the presidential primary process for both major political parties, the DNC’s decision to schedule South Carolina first was, as NBC News described, due to Iowa’s caucuses being viewed as “too white and too undemocratic.”
Despite state law mandating New Hampshire host a presidential primary “7 days or more immediately preceding the date on which any other state shall hold a similar election,” the DNC told the NHDP that the Jan. 23 primary scheduled by the New Hampshire secretary of state “cannot be used as the first determining stage of
