After Investigations, Midnight Voting Tradition To Continue In Dixville Notch

For anyone watching the New Hampshire primary on television, the midnight vote in Dixville Notch is one of the primary’s most familiar traditions. The citizens of the tiny town close to the Canadian border cast some of the first ballots in the first-in-the-nation presidential primary.

But as New Hampshire Public Radio’s Stranglehold podcast explained, the midnight vote was always a media-driven event that started more than 50 years ago as a way to give the press something to report early on Election Day.

Long held up to the rest of the world as a symbol of democracy at its purest, Dixville Notch’s practices have actually come under lots of scrutiny from state election investigators since 2016. A state investigation found that some of the town’s voters didn’t actually live there. Ironically, it was all the media coverage of the vote that clued in state officials to the irregularities.

Once the ineligible voters were removed from the rolls, it wasn’t clear that Dixville would have enough people to legally hold its own election again in 2020. The main business in town, the Balsams Resort, closed down about a decade ago — and took most of Dixville’s voters with it.

But the midnight vote’s fortunes changed when Les Otten, a developer who’s trying to bring the resort back to life, declared he would move back and make the town his residence for voting purposes, giving the town enough voters so the tradition could continue.

“Midnight voting in Dixville is to New Hampshire like snow is to winter,” said Otten, who says his main goal is to make sure Dixville continues to be a symbol of civic participation. But he acknowledged that keeping the midnight vote alive might also boost his quest to reopen the town’s shuttered resort.

State officials say they’re satisfied that Dixville has resolved the problems with its elections since 2016, but it’s keeping a close eye to be sure.

While Dixville will be back in the spotlight, there are other midnight voting locations in New Hampshire, including the town of Millsfield, which happens to be next door to Dixville.

“For us in Millsfield, it’s kind of humorous,” said Wayne Urso, Millsfield’s self-appointed town historian.

Millsfield is actually the birthplace of the midnight voting tradition, dating back to 1936, way before Dixville, when a 27-year-old woman named Genevieve Nadig dreamt it up.

“Reporters have come to Millsfield and then come into Dixville, and the big story that’s written is all about Dixville, with Millsfield being a side note,” Urso said.

For tonight’s midnight vote, an outside public relations company is fielding media credentials and orchestrating national news coverage of Dixville’s vote.

Over in Millsfield, Urso and his neighbors will get together at a local tavern, their designated polling place, to cast their ballots at the stroke of midnight. They say the press is welcome to show up, too.

— Casey McDermott, NHPR Investigative Reporter