That case is from the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, a federal appellate court. It is binding precedent not only in New Hampshire, but also in Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Puerto Rico. And it is the only federal appellate court to have ruled on the issue, which means it is still the most definitive interpretation of the law that there is for the entire country. The ruling is not based on details of statutory wording or legislative intent, so your suggestion that other courts might rule differently based on those things is completely baseless.
And it does seem very nature to this retired free speech lawyer. In any free speech case, the government has the burden of showing (1) that there is a significant governmental interest at stake, and (2) that the statute is narrowly tailored to that interest. The government has to present evidence for these two things, and they couldn’t. As the court notes, the constitution “is not satisfied by the assertion of abstract interests”. The country was a very different place a century ago, some states do allow you to photograph a ballot, and the state was not able to point to a single instance of a person photographing a ballot as part of a vote buying scheme. That seems like a good reason to think that it isn’t actually a problem. And even if it were, the court points to two problems with narrow tailoring. One, that the statute prohibits a lot of highly protected political speech, such as the original posts hypothetical. Two, vote buying is already illegal, and there is no reason to think that statutes prohibiting vote buying are inadequate.
Note that nothing in that analysis is particular to the New Hampshire statute, it applies equally well to any statute that prohibits people from taking pictures of their ballots. Again, this is a federal appellate court, and the only one to have addressed this issue, so it is the strongest law there is throughout the entire country.
That case is from the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, a federal appellate court. It is binding precedent not only in New Hampshire, but also in Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Puerto Rico. And it is the only federal appellate court to have ruled on the issue, which means it is still the most definitive interpretation of the law that there is for the entire country. The ruling is not based on details of statutory wording or legislative intent, so your suggestion that other courts might rule differently based on those things is completely baseless.
And it does seem very nature to this retired free speech lawyer. In any free speech case, the government has the burden of showing (1) that there is a significant governmental interest at stake, and (2) that the statute is narrowly tailored to that interest. The government has to present evidence for these two things, and they couldn’t. As the court notes, the constitution “is not satisfied by the assertion of abstract interests”. The country was a very different place a century ago, some states do allow you to photograph a ballot, and the state was not able to point to a single instance of a person photographing a ballot as part of a vote buying scheme. That seems like a good reason to think that it isn’t actually a problem. And even if it were, the court points to two problems with narrow tailoring. One, that the statute prohibits a lot of highly protected political speech, such as the original posts hypothetical. Two, vote buying is already illegal, and there is no reason to think that statutes prohibiting vote buying are inadequate.
Note that nothing in that analysis is particular to the New Hampshire statute, it applies equally well to any statute that prohibits people from taking pictures of their ballots. Again, this is a federal appellate court, and the only one to have addressed this issue, so it is the strongest law there is throughout the entire country.