The small community in New Hampshire known for holding its vote at midnight on primary day managed to find enough new residents to maintain its first-in-the-nation status.
Dixville Notch was at risk of losing its status as the first primary votes cast in the United States because its declining population left the village with too few people to legally operate a polling station. Luckily for Dixville, a real estate developer, Les Otten, plans to move to town before the voting takes place.
Tom Tillotson, one of the five residents of Dixville, said, “we’re all a go,” after word broke that Otten planned to move to town to put it over the legal edge and allow the tradition to continue. Otten resided in Maine but decided to change his legal residence to Dixville because he owns several properties in the region, including a $186 million development that is still under construction.
“Having the New Hampshire primary without Dixville voting first is like having winter in New Hampshire without snow,” Otten told the Associated Press. “At the moment, the importance of the tradition of voting in Dixville seemed as though it was something that needed to be paid attention to. It was something that was crying out for somebody to step forward and say, ‘I’ll be the fifth guy.’”
Dixville landed in legal trouble during the last election in February for operating a polling station with too few legal residents. Nicholas Chong Yen, an official with the state’s Election Law Unit, said it would continue to supervise Dixville’s election, saying, “We continue to be in communication with the local officials to ensure that they meet the requirements to hold an election.”
