I spent this past Tuesday working at our town’s polling place for the New Hampshire State Primary. I spent about 13 hours on my feet helping people insert their ballots into the counting machine, directing them to voter registration, and answering questions voters may have had.
All in all, things went smoothly. Two things that were surprising was the voter turnout which was considerably higher than the NH Secretary Of State’s office had predicted. They were expecting between 10% and 15% turnout. In my town it was closer to 34%. That was seen across the state. Generally, a state primary which is for state level offices – governor, state House, state Senate, Executive Council – as well as Federal offices – US House and US Senate.
One thing that occurred that no one had expected was that a lot of towns, including mine, ran out of Democrat ballots. In my town’s case we took the unused absentee ballots after they were signed by the Town Clerk after striking out ‘ABSENTEE BALLOT’ at the top. We also had to run some off on a copier since we had a limited number of those as well. All of the ‘copied’ ballots had to be hand counted since the machine rejected them because the copying paper used was too thin as compared to the usual card stock the ballots are printed on. (In case you are wondering, all of this was done at the direction of the state’s Secretary of State office.)
A lot of ‘Independent’ voters participated since they can ask for either a Republican or Democrat ballot. That request is marked at the Voter Registration desks. After they vote they can “undeclare” at checkout desks if they wish to return ti “Independent” status.
Ironically, after the polls closed and all the votes were tallied up, the number of voters who voted Republican or Democrat were only a couple of voters off from being equal. Of course that begs the question whether or not a smaller number of Democrat ballots the Republican ballots were shipped to our town for the primary? If so, why?
Winning candidates didn’t waste any time starting up their campaigns for the November elections, particularly those for the US House and US Senate seats. It seems the most of the campaign ads are negative ads thrashing an opponent for things they did or failed to do in the past. They haven’t reached the point of condemning them for their choice of a wardrobe pallette or footwear, but I have a feeling it will get as ridiculous as that the closer we get to the November election. As it is I am seeing my Election Bingo Card filling rapidly with each ad or campaign speech. Even though the election is only two months away I have a feeling that it’s going to seem like forever by the time it takes place.
