New Hampshire remains a political layer cake after Tuesday’s wild midterm election, with Democrats still controlling the federal layer and Republicans still controlling the state layer, although by a much smaller margin than before.
As for the results, the smallest margin is in the 400-seat House of Representatives. Republicans had a roughly 25-seat edge Monday but the Democrats picked up enough seats that through mid-afternoon Wednesday the clerk of the House was sending out tweets saying a 200-200 split was “not beyond the realm of possibility.” At presstime it appears that the GOP had maintained a tiny majority of 4 seats, although some recounts are expected so who knows?
Even if the majority holds, it is common for more than 4 state representatives to be missing from roll call on any given day – normal life can get in the way of a $100-a-year position – which leads to the possibility that we’ll see two years of nail-biting votes. Perhaps the legislature will reinstate the mask mandate so nobody gets sick and has to stay home.
Just as uncertain throughout ballot-counting on Wednesday was the state Senate. The GOP had a 14-10 majority on Monday; at presstime it appears that majority will be reduced to 13-11 but a 12-12 tie was also possible.
There’s no doubt about results for the executive branch, however: It remains solidly Republican. The Executive Council is 4-1 GOP, same as before, and Chris Sununu’s sweeping victory for a fourth term moves him past his father on the longevity list of state governors.
At least Sununu’s opponent, Tom Sherman, avoided Dan Feltes’ ignominious 2020 fate of losing Concord, the first time a Democratic gubernatorial hopeful had lost this Democratic stronghold in at least eight elections. Sherman won the Capital City on Tuesday, 9,992 to 7,774, although he lost the rest of the state by more than 90,000 votes.
There’s no doubt about our federal offices, either: They remain all Democratic. Maggie Hassan, Annie Kuster and Chris Pappas won re-election as U.S. senator and representatives, respectively, by margins that were quite comfortable. Even Pappas, regarded as the most endangered, won by 7 percentage points.
Far down at the bottom of the ballot is another too-close-to-call-at-presstime result: the proposal to remove the position of register of probate from New Hampshire ballots, since all of its tasks have been shifted to court clerks. Because that would amend the state constitution it requires a 2/3 majority and as of this writing it was hovering right around the 63% mark, a few percentage points short of success.
The other proposed amendment, to hold a constitutional convention, was soundly defeated by a 2-1 margin.
To a certain extent, the best news Tuesday was the lack of certain kinds of news. There were no incidents at polling places reported by the attorney general’s office despite what appears to have been a near-record turnout for a midterm election, and there were no reports of harassment of voters or of poll-workers, nor any obvious efforts to jam up the workings of small-town democracy.
Just as happily, in all the high-profile races the losing candidate publicly acknowledged the defeat and did not attempt to blame it on conspiracies or hoaxes or ghosts in the voting machine.
Speaking machines, Tuesday saw a test of what may be the new device for counting out paper ballots – one that is based on open-source software, which its non-profit vendor says gives it a transparency that can help deflate conspiracy theories. On Wednesday, the state hand-counted ballots from three small towns that used the device in the Nov. 8 election to determine how well the devices worked. The audit was – you guessed it – not complete at presstime.
On Thursday, the state will hand-count ballots from four randomly chosen towns that use our current AccuVote machines, part of an audit process also designed to quell concern about the accuracy of these aging devices. Pembroke and Tilton are among the four towns being audited.
Speaking of dynamics, let us praise the thousands of volunteers and relative handful of ill-paid municipal staff who oversaw a very crowded Election Day.
