The sense of jubilation in the offices of The Point as we as a collective staff
watched Barrack Obama cast his vote in this year’s historic American election
was palpable. The feeling of hope that has spread all over the world because of
his candidacy has been truly remarkable. This morning it is unlikely that we
will know for sure who has won the contest. We pray that Barrack Obama has done
so but American politics is notoriously unpredictable and the electorate
dangerously fickle.
In the first piece of good news to come from stateside
Barack Obama came up a big winner in the presidential race in Dixville Notch
and Hart’s Location, New Hampshire,
where a tradition of having the first Election Day ballots tallied lives on.
Democrat Obama defeated Republican John McCain by a count of 15 to 6 in
Dixville Notch, where a loud whoop accompanied the announcement in yesterday’s
first minutes. The town of Hart’s
Location reported 17 votes for Obama, 10 for McCain and two for write-in Ron
Paul. Independent Ralph Nader was on both towns’ ballots but got no votes.
With 115 residents between them, Dixville Notch and Hart’s
Location get every eligible voter to the polls beginning at midnight on Election Day.
Between them, the towns have been enjoying their first-vote status since 1948.
Being first means something to residents of the GraniteState,
home of the nation’s earliest presidential primary and the central focus —
however briefly — of the vote-watching nation’s attention every four years.
Voting was carried out in a room in a local hotel festooned
with political memorabilia from campaigns long past. Each voter gets an
individual booth so there are no lines at the magic hour. The votes were
quickly counted, announced and recorded on a posterboard that proclaims, “First
in the Nation, Dixville Notch.”
Although scores of states have voted early, the two villages
are the first to officially announce the results on Election Day.
Hart’s Location started opening its polls early in 1948, the
year Harry S. Truman beat Thomas Dewey, to accommodate railroad workers who had
to get to work early. Hart’s Location got out of the early voting business in
1964 after some residents grew weary of all the publicity, but brought it back
in 1996. Dixville Notch, nestled in a mountain pass 1,800 feet up and about
halfway between the White
MountainNational
Forest and the Canadian
border, followed suit in 1960, when John F. Kennedy beat Richard M. Nixon.
Nixon, the Republican, swept all nine votes cast in Dixville that year, and
before Tuesday, the town had gone for a Democrat only once since then. Let us
hope that this year they get their wish and Barrack Obama is not only their
next president but also the President of the entire Untied States.
“Victory has a thousand fathers but defeat is an orphan.”
John F. Kennedy
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