By PAULA TRACY, InDepthNH.org
CONCORD – A record voter turnout is expected at the polls on Tuesday and New Hampshire is ready for everyone to vote, according to Secretary of State David Scanlan.
On Thursday he predicted 824,000 New Hampshire voters will participate in the General Election.
In the 2016 General Election, there were a total of 755,850 ballots cast in New Hampshire and in 2020, the number were 814,499, according to data on the Secretary of State’s website.
People can vote for a new President, governor, and all 24 state senators, five executive councilors and 400 state representative seats are up for grabs along with two U.S. Congressional seats.
There is also one Constitutional question asking whether the state should raise the mandatory retirement age for judges. It will require a two-thirds majority to pass.
Voters can visit the Secretary of State’s Voter Information Lookup at app.sos.nh.gov to find their polling location and hours.
Scanlan told the governor and Executive Council on Wednesday morning that it is possible that after the election there will be more than 1 million people on the voter checklists across the state, a record high number.
As of Tuesday, he said there are 901,784 voters on the rolls with the highest block being those who are unaffiliated with a party or undeclared/independent. That number is 331,519.
Second behind those independent voters are the number of registered Republicans, at 304,340. The number of registered Democrats came in at 265,925, Scanlan said.
After the statutory checklist verification in 2021, many inactive voters’ names were removed from the voter checklist due to inactivity. Many of these voters are expected to re-register on election day.
This is the first presidential election since that purge, which could add to some delays for those individuals, particularly in college towns.
Voters and poll workers should expect lines when the polls open and steady voting throughout the day.
Also on Thursday, Attorney General John Formella announced the joint release of Pre-General Election Guidance to New Hampshire Election Officials by the Attorney General’s Office Election Law Unit along with the New Hampshire Secretary of State’s Office.
The guidance document is available here: https://www.doj.nh.gov/bureaus/election-law-unit/forms-publications.
More than 60 members of the Department of Justice will be fanned out across the state visiting the state’s 308 polling locations and Scanlan has also asked for a police officer to be present at each location during voting.
Formella said its Election Day Hotline will be open from 6:00 a.m. until 8:00 p.m. Anyone with concerns or questions can call 1-866-868-3703 (1-866-VOTER03). In the event an Election Day Hotline caller receives voicemail, the caller should leave a message. Attorneys in the office will address each message received. Inquiries and complaints may also be submitted via email at electionlaw@doj.nh.gov.
For those who would like to vote in honor of a veteran, they can post a tribute and get a pin free of charge from the Secretary of State’s office.
At the press conference on Tuesday, Scanlan sported one of the pins on his lapel.
The pin was designed by Jacob Aldridge, a student at Great Bay Community College and a 10-year Navy veteran. Already more than 700 tributes and pins have been distributed.
A link to the program is here https://www.sos.nh.gov/vote-honor-veteran
