WASHINGTON — Is a New Hampshire primary with no frontrunner on the ballot and no delegates still a New Hampshire primary? Depends on who you ask.
On Tuesday, voters in the Granite State will once again help kick off the presidential primary season, following the lead of the Iowa caucuses that kicked off the nominating process on the Republican side on Monday. But this year, there’s something different about the traditional primaries, at least on the Democratic side.
For starters, the Democratic National Committee, which has ultimate authority over how its presidential candidate is chosen, says state party officials violated national party rules by scheduling the contest earlier than allowed. As a result, there are zero delegates at stake in Tuesday’s primaries. Normally, the contest would have determined how the original allocation of 23 pledged delegates to the presidential nominating convention in Chicago this summer would be allocated to the various candidates.
In addition, President Joe Biden, who is seeking the Democratic nomination for a second term, decided to skip New Hampshire because their primaries violate party rules and will not appear on the ballot. It was Biden’s idea to oust the state from his prized primary calendar slot in favor of South Carolina, which revitalized his struggling 2020 campaign. That year, Biden came fourth in the Iowa caucuses and fifth in New Hampshire with just 8% of the vote. .
The Democratic Party of New Hampshire is nevertheless moving ahead with its primaries — which they note state law must hold before any other primary — and has already begun the process of selecting people who will serve as delegates to the national convention. This drew a sharp rebuke from the DNC, which called the upcoming primaries both “pointless” and “harmful.”
In response, state Democratic Party Chairman Ray Buckley said in a statement: “It’s safe to say that in New Hampshire the DNC is less popular than the NY Yankees. State law requires New Hampshire’s secretary of state to preside over the nation’s first primary, and he will follow the law — period. Nothing has changed and we look forward to a strong turnout of Democratic voters on January 23.”
Although Biden’s name will not appear as a printed option on the ballot, some New Hampshire Democrats have launched an effort to encourage primary voters to cast their votes for Biden as a write-in candidate. Write-in candidates are eligible to win elections in New Hampshire. President Lyndon Johnson did just that in 1968 when he won the New Hampshire primary as a write-in candidate, although he dropped out of the race 19 days later after what was widely seen as a disappointing eight-point victory over Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota. .
In the 2020 New Hampshire Democratic primary, write-in votes made up just 2% of the total vote, or about 6,000 votes. A large-scale write-in effort would increase the workload for local election officials, but New Hampshire Secretary of State David Scanlan has said he expects primary results to be available, including a breakdown of write-in votes for Biden.
“It sounds like it would be a big job, but you have to remember that it’s one race where it’s ‘vote for one,’ and it’s pretty easy to sort through the ballots,” he told reporters at a briefing in October . “It will be some extra work. I don’t know if it will be that formidable.”
Scanlan has also said the counting process will remain largely unaffected in communities that already count ballots by hand. The process will take longer in larger jurisdictions that use machines to count regular ballots because they must count the entries by hand. He added that local officials are calling in additional help to speed up the count.
“I think this is a challenge that can be overcome,” he said. “I fully expect that the cities will be able to get the volunteer resources they need to help with that.”
The New Hampshire primary provides potential voters with the following instructions: “To vote for a person whose name is not on the ballot, write the person’s name in the ‘WRITE-IN’ field, and fill in the oval opposite your choice completely….” Scanlan advises voters to follow these instructions, but adds that it is important for local election officials to determine voter intent when reviewing ballots.
“If someone wrote in a candidate’s name and didn’t fill in the oval, that doesn’t disqualify that vote,” he said in an interview with WMUR-TV. “That voter’s intent would be for the name he actually wrote on the ballot. And that is how that ballot would be counted.”
In New Hampshire, ballots without a dark oval in a given election are generally categorized as “blank.” Write-in votes where the oval is not filled in can therefore initially be included in the “empty” total instead of the write-in total. This would be corrected as local election officials determine whether a ballot initially categorized as “blank” is actually a valid write-in vote.
As for variations in the spelling of a write-in candidate’s name, Scanlan says the name doesn’t need to be spelled correctly or written in a specific way if the voter’s intent is clear.
“If they just write ‘Biden,’ I think the meaning is very clear. “If they write in ‘Bidon,’ I think the meaning is still pretty clear,” he said in October. “If they just write ‘Joe,’ you have to ask the question: Are there any other Joes on the ballot or running for office?” If there are, you probably don’t know which ‘Joe’ the person is voting for.”
The Associated Press will report a running total of unprocessed write-in votes as provided by election officials. The AP will then provide a breakdown of entries for Biden, as well as a combined total of non-Biden entries, as local officials sort ballots overnight and in the following days. As the number of registrations for Biden and “Other registrations” increases, the number of unprocessed registrations will decrease.
A total of 21 Democrats will appear by name in the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday, along with the opportunity to vote for a write-in candidate. Republicans will also hold a primary, with 24 candidates on the ballot (while Republicans can also vote for a write-in candidate, the percentage using that option is expected to be minimal).
As for delegates, if recent history is any guide, it is still possible that New Hampshire Democrats will send a delegation to the Democratic National Convention this summer and that they will vote for the nomination. In 2008, when Michigan and Florida held primaries earlier than party rules allowed, the DNC initially said both states would be stripped of all their delegates. Then, after negotiations with the campaigns of then-Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton announced that delegates from both states would each be allowed to cast half a vote. By the time the convention began, party officials voted to grant Michigan and Florida delegates full voting rights in the interest of party unity.
The last successful statewide attempt to win federal office was in 2010, when Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski lost the Republican primary but won the general election despite not appearing on the ballot. She received 99% of the write-in votes cast, but the final results were not known until more than two weeks after election day.