In what has been a New Hampshire tradition for decades, voters in multiple small towns will go to the polls at midnight with the results released shortly after voting is complete.
According to USA Today:
“In 2016, as development threatens to change this small community, Millsfield is returning to its political roots — maybe for the last time.
On Monday at midnight, about 15 of Millsfield’s 29 residents will gather at the Log Haven pub and cast some of the first votes in New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation presidential primary. The town’s remaining registered voters will have voted absentee or certified they did not intend to cast a ballot at all to ensure the town complies with a rule mandating 100% voter accountably for midnight voting.”
Interest in the results is enormous this year, the article notes.
“In normal years, the bed and breakfast serves as Millsfield’s polling place. Locals mark their ballots in the guest rooms and count them around the dinner table. Afterward, they share Sheldon’s homemade cookies.
But this year, the town decided to move the voting to Log Haven down the street. They need more room to handle the anticipated influx of media.
The townspeople had to move the handicapped parking sign, the only one in town, from the bed and breakfast’s parking lot to Log Haven to make the restaurant a legal voting site. Inside, the pub’s wooden beams are wrapped in red, white and blue streamers.
In addition to Millsfield and nearby Hart’s Location, the third — and most famous — midnight voting location in New Hampshire is Dixville Notch, just down the road. All three will host midnight voting Monday.
Midnight voting has been a New Hampshire election tradition since at least 1948, when Hart’s Location held the first midnight balloting to accommodate the busy schedules of the town’s railroad workers, Urso said.”
