Bernie Sanders and John Kasich have won a majority of the votes as the first ballots of the first-in-the-nation primary were cast early Tuesday. Sanders won over all four Democratic voters in the tiny town of Dixville, while Kasich sneaked past Donald Trump, 3-2, among Republicans.
Under New Hampshire state law, communities with fewer than 100 voters can get permission to open their polls at midnight and close them as soon as all registered voters have cast their ballots. While that happened in three locations, Dixville traditionally gets most of the spotlight due to its media-friendly setup at the Balsams Grand Resort Hotel.
Located about 20 miles from the Canadian border, Dixville exists as a town only for voting purposes. Almost all of its nine voters are employees of the hotel, which closed in 2011 but is currently undergoing a major overhaul under new owners.
The town’s 100 percent turnout is quite impressive, if you don’t consider that it hit its 38-vote peak in 1988, according to The Boston Globe. (The Globe also reported that only ten will vote in the town this year.) These few votes will make headlines Tuesday morning, as they do every four years
In nearby Millsfield, local Republicans gave half their 18 votes to Ted Cruz and three to Donald Trump while scattering the remaining votes across six candidates, including recent dropout Rand Paul. Clinton got two votes there to Sanders’ one.
Hart’s Location, farther south, is the third town that has cast ballots. Kasich got five votes there, Trump four, Chris Christie two and one each for Jeb Bush, Ben Carson and Marco Rubio. On the Democratic side, Bernie Sanders got 12 votes while Clinton got seven. Mark Stewart Greenstein, a Democratic candidate from the Live Free or Die Alliance also got two votes.
Two other towns opened their polls at midnight. Hart’s Location, which started the tradition in 1948 to accommodate the schedules of railroad workers, and Millsfield, which first held midnight voting in 1952. Sanders was the Democratic winner in Hart’s Location with 12 votes, compared to 7 for Clinton and 2 for minor candidate Mark Stewart Greenstein.
On the Republican side, Kasich got 5 votes, while Trump got 4. Chris Christie got 2 votes, while Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio and Ben Carson got 1 each. In Millsfield, Clinton earned 2 votes, compared to 1 vote for Sanders.In the Republican race, Cruz was the pick in Millsfield, with 9 votes, followed by Trump, with 3 votes. Bush, Christie, Carly Fiorina, Kasich, Rand Paul and Rubio received 1 vote each.
Former owner Neil Tillotson started the midnight voting tradition in 1960, likely at the suggestion of a news photographer looking for an advantage in getting his pictures out to newspapers ahead of his rivals. For many years, voters cast their ballots in individual booths in the hotel’s posh ballot room. Because of the renovations, the nine current residents voted in another building on the property, the Hale House.
In 2012, there was a tie for first place on the Republican side, with Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman getting two votes apiece. All three Democrats voted for Obama.
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