It’s almost Election Day, and a new voter ID law in New Hampshire is stirring up controversy and confusion in the Granite State.

The new law, passed by Governor Chris Sununu, would require first-time voters to present a passport, birth certificate or naturalization papers in order to prove both citizenship and residency in New Hampshire prior to casting their ballot. However, the law won’t go into effect until November 11 – after Election Day – even though robust conversation about the law is happening now.

“Confusion was actually something they wanted to embrace,” said Arnie Arnesen, host of “The Attitude with Arnie Arnesen” on WNHN in New Hampshire.

“Who this ultimately was targeting were students in community towns like Durham, like Hanover, because they know that they are new to New Hampshire, and therefore, in order to create barriers to voting, they wanted to embrace this idea of creating an opportunity for a passport, a birth certificate or naturalization papers,” Arnesen said. “Anything that makes it more challenging to vote.”

Challenges abound in Rhode Island as well with respect to the Washington Bridge, which has been shut down since December 2023 with no end in sight. A recent Boston Globe article states that approximately 90,000 cars used the bridge daily before its closure. Ted Nesi, politics editor and investigative reporter at WPRI in Rhode Island, said this unending closure is starting to affect people’s lives in significant ways.

“It’s a Rhode Island issue. It’s also a southeastern Massachusetts issue,” Nesi said. “It’s changing people’s routines in this region. I know people who have talked about switching jobs. I know people who live on one side of the bridge, they have a daycare on the other side, but then go back to their job on the other side of the bridge and the back and forth in the morning can just be brutal.”

Meanwhile, the Sagamore Bridge replacement project on Cape Cod – a unique state and federal joint effort – is forging on, though construction will not start until 2028 and will last several years, costing about $2 billion, said Jennette Barnes, reporter and producer at CAI on Cape Cod. A more pressing matter off the Cape are offshore wind farms, particularly an auction of usable offshore parcels at the end of October.

“The auction really is a jumping off point for a new phase, because it gives private developers a concrete stake in those individual areas off the Cape,” Barnes said. “So once they have that lease, they can start planning, they can enter the federal permitting process, all of those kinds of things. They can go ahead with all of that even before they have any contracts to sell the power. So, once that auction happens, we will know what companies we’re dealing with and start to learn about some of their plans.”

All this and more on this week’s regional news round table!

Guests