FILE - In this Nov. 7, 2016, file photo, Town moderator Tom Tillotson arrives with ballots as voters get ready to cast their votes just after midnight in Dixville Notch, N.H. Tom's father Neil Tillotson, who bought the resort called the Balsams, arranged for early voting at the hotel beginning in 1960. But the tiny, isolated community near the Canadian border may need to forfeit that tradition in 2020. The attorney general's office said the community is currently missing a required official in order to hold an election in the Feb. 11 primary. (AP Photo/Jim Cole, File)
In this Nov. 7, 2016, file photo, Town moderator Tom Tillotson arrives with ballots as voters get ready to cast their votes just after midnight in Dixville Notch, N.H. (AP Photo/Jim Cole, File)
Associated Press
  • In a US voting tradition, Dixville Notch, a township in New Hampshire voted at midnight, releasing some of the first Election Day results.
  • All five eligible voters, including a lifelong Republican, voted for Biden.
  • The township requires at least five people for the tradition to carry on, and the vote in Dixville Notch almost didn’t happen this year.
  • Biden is the first US Presidential candidate to sweep in Dixville since Richard Nixon in 1960.
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In some of the first officially counted results of the 2020 US presidential election, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden has collected all five votes from Dixville Notch, a township in New Hampshire. 

The rural county traditionally votes at midnight during the US presidential election. The last presidential candidate to sweep all of the votes in Dixville was Richard Nixon in 1960 — also the year the midnight voting tradition began. In 2016, Hillary Clinton won 4 votes, Donald Trump won 2, and Gary Johnson won one vote. Mitt Romney, who was not running in 2016, was written in by one resident.

Les Otten, a lifelong Republican and Dixville resident, was the first Biden voter of the evening. In a viral video, he introduced the process and said that his vote “is meant to send a message to my fellow Republicans that our party can find its way back.” 

Paradoxically, Otten added, voting for Biden was the only way to salvage the GOP, and that Americans need leaders “with character.”

 

Over the years, the tradition of the US election starting in Dixville almost vanished — due to a New Hampshire law requiring five town officials to monitor the election — but Otten moved to Dixville Notch and helped salvage the process. Otten is also the developer of The Balsams, the property where the historic initial ballot-counting takes place.

So far, New Hampshire voters are expected to more than double turnout from the 2016 election. Another town, Millsfield, New Hampshire, also votes at midnight (and may have originated the midnight voting tradition in New Hampshire, The Boston Globe reported). Their slightly larger voter pool went for President Donald Trump 16 to 5, according to CNN.

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