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The results are in, and it’s a 50:50 split in the US Presidential Elections – at least, it is in one town in New Hampshire, where all six registered voters have already cast their ballot.
The race to call the first result may be a staple of British elections, but no local authority could ever compete with Dixville Notch, one of the few districts to practise midnight voting.
With polls closing as soon as all eligible votes have been cast, it is reliably the first result on election day.
The whole thing started as a PR stunt in 1960. A hotel owner pushed for the creation of the tiny township solely to turn his resort near the Canadian border into a voting location, gaining free publicity from journalists keen to declare an early, if unimportant, result on election night.
The hotel has since shut. And while the number of registered voters there only just meets the legal minimum for a voting district, the press still flock there every four years.
Even with the media watching, you might think that counting six votes is easy enough. But not everyone online was impressed with how it all turned out this year.
Alex Cole of Newistics had a warning for Republicans keen to remove voter machines to prevent so-called electoral fraud: “It took Dixville Notch 25 minutes to read all those names on 6 pieces of paper, so imagine 7 million in one night.”
One person felt the person making the announcement should have at least learnt the candidates’ names: “CNN is airing the vote count in Dixville Notch, where there are 6 registered voters, and the person reading the ballots out looked at the ballot and said, “I never say her name right”
“Girl you knew what your job was right???”
Another chimed in with some pronunciation advice. “You better learn it lady!! It’s COMMA LA! KAMALA!”
Of course, it didn’t take long for X to crunch the numbers. Within hours, someone had analysed those six votes and produced a fully-fledged projection predicting a landslide for Harris.
Some people seemed to think that the results could really tell us something. In the words of social media influencer BrooklynDad_Defiant: “Kamala Harris gets a 50-50 split in Dixville Notch (3 to 3) where there were exactly zero registered Democratic voters.
“She’s converting folks.
“I’ll take it.”
In an election where we are being told that every vote counts, however, perhaps it’s best not to attach too much importance to the first six votes. Not least because Dixville Notch’s record at predicting the winner is, like this year’s result itself, is 50:50.
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