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A man adds the votes of the five ballots cast shortly after midnight
Source: Scott Eisen via PA Images
TWO SMALL New Hampshire communities that vote for president just after midnight on Election Day have cast their ballots, and one of them is turning 60 years since the tradition began.
The results in Dixville Notch, near the Canadian border, were a sweep for former Vice President Joe Biden, who won all five of the city’s votes.
In Millsfield, 12 miles south, US President Donald Trump won 16 votes to Biden’s five.
Normally there would be a lot of food and a lot of media crammed into a small space to watch the vote, Tom Tillotson, city moderator at Dixville Notch, said last week.
But that is no longer possible due to the coronavirus pandemic.
It is also difficult to observe the 60th anniversary of the tradition that began in November 1960, the election in which John F Kennedy defeated incumbent Vice President Richard Nixon.
“Sixty years, and unfortunately, we can’t celebrate it,” he said.
City Moderator Tom Tillotson, left, and Les Otten review the five votes cast just after midnight.
Source: Scott Eisen / PA Images
A third community with a midnight vote, Hart’s Location, suspended the tradition of this election due to coronavirus concerns.
He decided to hold the vote from 11 to 19 hours.
The City of White Mountains began early voting in 1948 to accommodate railroad workers who had to be at work before normal voting hours.
It finally stopped in 1964 but brought it back in 1996.
Communities also vote shortly after midnight for the nation’s first presidential primary of New Hampshire, which was on February 11.
That hardly happened this year in Dixville Notch, when one person moved in, leaving the remaining four residents at one less than the minimum necessary to handle various voting responsibilities.
That was fixed when a developer who was working on renovating the now-closed Balsams complex moved in, where the tradition of voting began.
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For years, the vote took place in a wood-paneled room filled with political memorabilia at the Balsams, which closed in 2011.
Some of those items were taken to a former culinary school on the property, the scene of Tuesday’s vote.
Planning to stay up late on Tuesday to see the results? TheJournal.ie will be blogging live all night to bring you all the developments as they happen. Our team of reporters and columnists will be analyzing what the results mean (and what will happen next) long before dawn on Wednesday morning.
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