By Arun Kumar, IANS
Washington : The remote White Mountain town of Dixville Notch, located in the far northern reaches of New Hampshire, has again won the race to be “first in the nation” to vote in the US presidential primaries.
Ballots by all 17 registered voters in the tiny hamlet of 74 residents were cast and counted just after midnight Monday thanks to a state law allowing communities to close polls once voting is over and announce the results.
Dixville Notch has been doing so since 1960 when to spark publicity and serve a civic function, the owner of the 15,000-acre Balsams Grand Resort Hotel near the Canadian border, opened voting booths at midnight on primary day and reported the results of the staff’s ballots to the local wire service.
This time it was no different. To speed things up, in an attempt to assure Dixville Notch would be first to finish voting, each of the 13 voters present had a voting booth. Four others voted by absentee ballot. The balloting was over within minutes as 12 Independents, three Republicans and two Democrats voted.
The results were announced at 12:08 a.m. And the winners were Democrat Barack Obama, seeking to be America’s first black president and Republican John McCain, a Vietnam War veteran. McCain had won New Hampshire back in 2000 with a 19 point lead over George W Bush, who eventually got the party nomination and went on to become president.
Obama won seven of the 10 votes cast for Democrats with former first lady Hillary Clinton receiving none. John Edwards, 2004 Democratic vice presidential nominee got two votes and New Mexico governor Bill Richardson received one.
Of the seven votes cast for Republicans, McCain won four, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney received two, and former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani won one vote.
Media spotlight will shine again election day Nov 4 on the town that has lured a stream of politicians, including Bush, and former presidents Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan, every four years with its midnight vote.