For what appears to the first time in well over a century, many New Hampshire communities decided to postpone today’s town ballot voting due to bad weather – but not before a day full of confusion about whether town or state officials have the authority to make the call.
“I don’t want someone endangering themselves to come out in a foot of snow to cast a vote for the cemetery trustee,” said Salisbury Moderator John Herbert on Monday morning, as he drove around town and put up posters announcing the delay in the face of the massive nor’easter expected to hit Tuesday.
He was one of the first moderators to make the decision, long before any announcement came down from the governor’s office.
Ten of the communities in the Concord area decided to delay Tuesday’s ballot vote, which involves races such as select board and school board members (and cemetery trustees), as well as zoning changes and, in SB 2 towns, warrant articles.
All town meetings planned for Tuesday evening in the region have also been rescheduled.
It is not uncommon for town meetings to be delayed by weather, but ballot voting has apparently not been postponed since 1888, when a massive blizzard dropped well over 2 feet in New Hampshire.
In a statement following a 2 p.m conference call that involved scores of town moderators and town clerks with officials from the Secretary of State’s office, Gov. Chris Sununu urged towns to not delay voting, fearing confusion.
The conference call followed hours of uncertainty about whether towns could delay voting at all. Later in the day, legislators released a joint statement announcing they would introduce emergency legislation to combat any election problems as a result of the weather.
“There is quite a debate going on in Concord,” Alan Hardy, co-town administrator in Boscawen, noted in late morning, responding to Monitor queries.
“We can do it, then we can’t do it, then we can do it,” Loudon Town Clerk Wendy Walsh Young said Monday before noon, describing the back-and-forth advice between the town attorney and state officials.
State law (RSA 40:4) says moderators can “postpone and reschedule the deliberative session or voting day of the meeting” due to “a weather emergency,” but it’s not clear if that law refers to ballot voting, as compared to the voting for the budget and warrant articles that takes place at a traditional town meeting.
With news of a serious snowstorm heading our way, the Secretary of State’s office had announced previously that ballot voting must go on – or, as Secretary of State Bill Gardner told the Union-Leader, “We don’t have snow days in the law for elections.”
As the severity of the storm became more apparent on Monday, an increasing number of moderators announced postponements. One town, Chichester, held an emergency select board meeting Monday night before deciding to postpone. Others stuck to the original schedule.
“I think that we’re a hardy bunch in New Hampshire and Boscawen as well,” Hardy said. “Talking to our public works director . . . he said, ‘I’ll keep it clean for you.’ ”
In his statement, Sununu pointed out one complication from a hodgepodge of delays: School districts covering multiple towns could have some member communities voting on Tuesday and other communities voting on later days.
Belmont, for instance, will be voting on ballot items for the Shaker Regional School District two days later than their fellow school district town, Canterbury.
People in the later-voting towns could be affected by knowledge of how other towns in the school district have voted, unless moderators in those earlier-voting towns make a very unusual decision to keep results secret for a few days.
“We strongly encourage towns to coordinate with other towns that may be in their cooperative school district, as . . . it would create a lot of confusion if some towns are voting on school issues and some towns are not,” Sununu wrote in a press release.
Feeling these statements were not abundantly clear, State House minority leaders Sen. Jeff Woodburn and Rep. Steve Shurtleff released their own.
“Given Governor Sununu’s statement this afternoon advising towns to continue holding their town elections on Tuesday or be prepared for legal challenges, the legislature must act to eliminate confusion and ensure that any town that needs to postpone their town elections tomorrow due to the impending snowstorm can do so,” they said.
Woodburn and Shurtleff plan to introduce emergency legislation at the Senate Rules Committee meeting on Wednesday “to ensure that results from any elections postponed due to public safety concerns are enforceable and so that our local officials can make the right decision for their communities without fear of a legal challenge.”
Herbert, who has been town moderator since 1999, said state law already gave him authority to postpone Salisbury’s election. Plus, he sees a sizeable risk with holding ballot voting as scheduled on a bad weather day: not being able to stop in the middle.
Salisbury has unusual voting hours – polling doesn’t start until 11 a.m., and lasts until 7 p.m. – and the storm is expected to worsen Tuesday as the day goes on.
“In today’s election environment, there’s no way people would believe me taking ballots home would be okay,” Herbert said.
(David Brooks can be reached at 369-3313, dbrooks@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @GraniteGeek. Elodie Reed can be reached at 369-3306, ereed@cmonitor.com or on Twitter
@elodie_reed.)
