A plaque in the center of Concord, the capital of New Hampshire, reminds tourists that residents of this state take the area codes very seriously. Since 1920 they have been celebrated there like nowhere else. The sign outside the Capitol says New Hampshire voters “have consistently favored whichever candidate ultimately reaches the Oval Office.” However, Joe Biden clinched the nomination and the White House after finishing fifth in New Hampshire with just 8.4% of the vote. Perhaps for this reason, as president, Biden encouraged a change to the primary calendar in the Democratic Party. Iowa disciplinedly agreed not to vote in the Democratic primary last week, but New Hampshire rebelled. The dispute over this ended with Biden being excluded from the election.
Twenty-one names appear on the Democratic ballot, including one president, not by office but by name: President R. Boddie of Atlanta. Also featured is Vermin Supreme, an eccentric activist known for wearing a rubber boot as a hat on his head and carrying a giant toothbrush. Of all of them, the only ones with any political clout are Congressman Dean Phillips and self-help author Marianne Williamson, who tried it in 2020 but withdrew before voting began.
Biden is not disqualified nor has his eligibility been questioned, as was the case with Donald Trump in Colorado and Maine because of his role in the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. The president simply missed the deadlines for registering some kind of order. to delay the vote in New Hampshire.
Although his name does not appear on the ballot, citizens can vote for him by entering their name in the blank space provided. Biden has not campaigned in the state, but his allies are racing to engage voters and prevent him from losing or another candidate from coming close. A political action committee called Granite for America is sending out three-step instructions for casting a write-in vote. Counting the Democratic primary can be a bit complicated in this type of election because the machines don't recognize the name, only that the vote goes to another candidate and has to be processed manually.
Change the order
Biden last year asked the Democratic National Committee to change the order of the primaries and remove the starting point from the caucuses in Iowa (a white, conservative and religious state) to give it to the South Carolina primary. The goal was to give more power to black and other minority voters, which is crucial to the party's base. In February, the Democratic Party approved a new schedule that began with the South Carolina primary on February 3, followed three days later by the New Hampshire and Nevada primaries.
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But New Hampshire objected, arguing that it traditionally held the nation's first primary, something even covered by state law. State law gives New Hampshire's Republican Secretary of State David Scanlan exclusive authority to set the 2024 primary election date. As he has done for 40 years, he set it for the Tuesday of the week after the Iowa caucuses. State law also requires primary elections to be held at least seven days before all other primary elections.
“New Hampshire has a tradition and New Hampshire has a law, and both the tradition and the law would definitely be fulfilled,” Scanlan said in November when setting the date. In his opinion, using racial diversity to change the calendar sets a bad precedent. “At what point does a state become too old, too rich, too sophisticated or too religious to hold early primaries?” he argued.
The Democratic National Committee asked his party's candidates not To, and Biden, a proponent of calendar reform, obeyed, but that did not stop the process or prevent the remaining candidates from registering. In a sort of final tantrum, the Democratic National Committee, which governs the nomination process, has decided that even in primaries, delegates will not be appointed based on their results. New Hampshire's attorney general has accused Democrats of voter suppression.
Biden is not the first president not to run in the New Hampshire primary. In 1968, Lyndon B. Johnson failed To and still won thanks to write-in votes. However, his victory was narrow and led to him announcing a few weeks later that he would not seek re-election. Biden appears to have a big lead for now. A recent poll from CNN and the University of New Hampshire found that 69% of Democratic primary voters plan to put Biden's name on the ballot, significantly higher than Phillips' 7% and Williamson's 6. Voters must write their name against the president. In his favor, Joe Biden is an easy name.
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