The New Hampshire Primaries are off and running! According to reports, New Hampshire voters are shuffling, drifting, and possibly even ambling to the polls. Presidential hopeful Nikki Haley, who has adopted the "I have not yet begun to fight" philosophy, even as the gunwale dips below the waves and water ships over the bow, has a reason to be optimistic. She opened the festivities today with a solid win, claiming the votes of an entire town.
All six of them.
Dixville Notch, N.H., which enjoys the tradition of being the first city in the U.S. to vote, opened the polls at midnight. Haley claimed all six votes. Technically, it is a sweep, albeit a small one.
According to the Associated Press, voting took place in the Tillotson House living room instead of the Balsams Resort, which is currently being renovated. When people arrived at the poll, they were offered chocolate chip cookies and were greeted by an 11-month-old golden retriever named Maxine. The press was also on hand to cover the first primary vote, outnumbering voters approximately 10-1. Dixville Notch is a resort town, which would explain the low voter turnout.
Haley is likely forestalling the inevitable, and you can scoff if you like at the town of Dixville Notch and its six voters. But the truth is that there is something uniquely American about six people in a tiny New Hampshire town with their cookies and their puppy turning out at midnight to cast the first ballots. Ideally, this should be the norm for the nation. Les Otten, who owns and operates the Balsam resort, would seem to agree. He told the AP:
It’s special. It really is. It’s what ought to happen in every community in the United States, where there is 100% participation, everybody votes. None of the six of us can complain about the outcome of the election, because we’ve participated.
He disagreed with the notion that the New Hampshire Primary is a dead issue, with Ron DeSantis shuttering his campaign and Joe Biden not appearing on the Democrat's ballot. He commented, "It always does boil down to just a couple of people at the end of the day. We’ve got two viable candidates on the Republican side.”
He has a point. The MAGA faithful may come for me with tar and feathers, but there is something disheartening about a single candidate dominating the field to the point that the primary and caucus processes become obsolete. Primary season used to be about the exchange of ideas and even arguments, and that is part of what made America great in the first place.
Ideally, the electoral process should be time-consuming and involve as many people as possible. I firmly believe that our Founding Fathers wanted the work of maintaining the republic to be a little complicated. They wanted to avoid a copy-and-paste, cut-and-dried approach to government. They wanted an involved citizenry.
Haley won't last, and the Trump Train will steam straight ahead at full steam. I'm not here to knock Trump, but I do wish that the road to the nomination was not a straight line to a single candidate.
So here's to Dixville Notch, its chocolate chip cookies, its puppy, and its six votes. Long live the Republic.
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