Haley Dover

Free Press Staff Writer

With 20 minutes left before the voting closed in the 2012 New Hampshire primary, the fire alarms at the Hanover polling site went off, forcing the crowd still waiting to cast their ballots to exit the building.

Manchester, New Hampshire, lawyer Andru Volinsky obtained an extension in the polling hours to make up for lost time from a judge who was on call for just such an emergency. Volinksy, one of dozens of lawyers on hand on primary day that year, and the judge were part of an effort to make sure the voting went smoothly, the attorney said.

Volinksy, who serves as Sen. Bernie Sanders' state legal counsel, said he thinks fire alarms will stay quiet throughout the Granite State this year.

"There's a kind of chippiness that happens around primary day, and there may be individuals who try to take things into their own hands," he said. "That's exactly what we're looking for."

This primary day, dozens of attorneys and law students from across New England, including at least five from Vermont, again will observe the polls.

Their goal: to ensure that everyone who is qualified to vote gets to vote. Lawyers recruited as observers are non-partisan. An estimate of the number of lawyers and law students was not immediately available.

The Clinton camp has recruited attorneys and students for the same purpose, said Paul Twomey. He serves as Clinton's state legal counsel, and was President Obama's New Hampshire state legal counsel in 2008 and 2012.

Burlington lawyer Rich Cassidy, who also serves as a member of the Democratic National Committee, said he recruited five lawyers from the Green Mountain state. He said about a dozen were still considering the option.

"Our primary interest, with a small 'p,' is to protect the voting process and the voters," Volinsky said.

That means helping voters through same-day registration, getting undeclared voters the correct ballots and providing paperwork to those who claim New Hampshire as their domicile, Volinsky said. Students, members of the military or people on work assignment in the state can claim New Hampshire as their domicile even if their permanent residence is in another state.

That also means making sure everything runs smoothly at the polls. No coin tosses or missing votes from precincts here, two things that voters in Iowa faced during the Monday caucuses.

The Des Moines Register called the Democratic caucuses "a debacle." The editorial board called for a complete audit of results and said too many questions have been raised over the training of caucus volunteers and inconsistent vote counts. Early Tuesday afternoon former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was named the winner of the caucuses by 0.3 percentage points, but the Sanders campaign is rechecking results on its own.

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High voter turnout added to the chaos, the newspaper reported.

A spokesman for the Iowa Democratic party said 171,517 democratic voters participated in the caucuses. Republicans counted more than 180,000.

New Hampshire could see similar numbers, and the lawyers will be prepared to resolve any problems that may pop up.

When asked what he thinks New Hampshire can learn from Iowa, Twomey's, Clinton's legal aid, response was clear.

"Nothing," he said.

The two processes are completely different, he added. Getting people to come to a caucus and take part in the process is much more difficult than asking people to go to a polling place and fill out a ballot.

The biggest enemy the volunteer lawyers are likely to face is long lines, Volinsky said. Lines outside the door of polling sites can deter people from waiting, especially students in precincts such as Hanover and Dunham where Dartmouth College and the University of New Hampshire, respectively, are located.

Volinsky has seen it before. In the early 2000s the New Hampshire Republicans challenged the domicile rule when student voters showed up to register, he said. With the registration process moving slow, lines got longer and students left.

"There will be a very large turnout and any effort to complicate the process will make the lines longer, so our job is to do anything we can to facilitate the flow of voters," he said.

Both Twomey and Volinsky agree that there is little chance of anything crazy happening at the polls on Tuesday. Likely problems include mundane things like too few ballots at polling locations or the occasional fire alarm malfunction, Twomey said. Those things can be quickly addressed.

Nothing is gained from misbehaving during an election, he added.

"We want people to vote, so why would you interfere?" he asked.

Contact Haley Dover at 660-1850 or hdover@freepressmedia.com. Follow Haley on Twitter at www.twitter.com/HaleyRDover.