Election Day kicked off in the tiny New Hampshire township of Dixville Notch, where Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump each secured three votes in an opening midnight poll that’s more tradition than trend indicator. In this microscopic electoral moment, all of six voters showed up to make a statement in this sleepy, unincorporated town along the U.S.-Canada border.
As per custom, eligible voters in Dixville Notch gathered at the nearly abandoned Balsams Hotel to cast their ballots in total secrecy. And just after the last vote dropped, the tally was revealed, long before most voters even set foot in a polling station. Les Otten, one of the few Dixville Notch locals and a driving force behind the hotel’s long-delayed renovation, tried to frame the event as a “civics lesson.” Perhaps it’s a civics lesson in patience, as Otten has promised for years to get the Balsams Hotel back up and running but still has no groundbreaking date in sight.
Even with only six ballots cast, this little ceremony drew national reporters who outnumbered the actual voters, giving it an odd sense of inflated importance.
Let’s be honest: this isn’t about predicting the next president; it’s more like a photo op dressed up as democracy. Dixville Notch’s voting history leans Democratic in recent elections, with a total of five votes for President Joe Biden in 2020 and a slight edge for Hillary Clinton back in 2016. This time, however, it’s a dead heat.
Les Otten, who claims lifelong loyalty to the GOP, said he surprisingly cast his vote for Harris, citing concerns over Trump’s alleged demand for “personal allegiance.” According to Otten, “Nowhere in the Pledge of Allegiance does it say anything about pledging your allegiance to a person.” That might just be the most ironic twist in this tiny town’s storied history, one of its own Republicans rejecting Trump in the symbolic first vote of the day.
While Dixville Notch often grabs headlines, neighboring Millsfield and Hart’s Location opted out of midnight voting this year, breaking their sporadic tradition. This New Hampshire midnight voting drama has even earned a nod in pop culture, like the episode of “The West Wing” inspired by these towns.
The Dixville voters also cast their votes in a nail-biter of a governor’s race, with Republicans Kelly Ayotte and Joyce Craig in a close competition to succeed Gov. Chris Sununu. And thus, Dixville Notch keeps its place in electoral folklore, one small polling station under the national spotlight, balancing tradition with irrelevance while the rest of America waits for the real results to start pouring in.
