by E.A. van Abbenes
THAT America will elect a president next week is something the entire world is aware of, and has been for a long time. This is due to the fact that the US is the only democracy where election dates are already pre-set for eternity. Therefore, we already know that the presidential election a thousand years from now will be held on Tuesday, Nov. 4, 3024.
What we don’t know in advance this time is when the results will be known. Four years ago, it took five days for news agency AP to declare that Joe Biden had won. Donald Trump tried to challenge that with 61 lawsuits, but lost each time, and an ultimate attempt to keep Congress from ratifying the result on Jan. 6, 2021 failed as well. A similar sequence of events may be expected this year, too.
BUT ONE outcome we don’t have to wait for. That is the very first result that will come in, in New Hampshire, in a tiny village near the Canadian border. Dixville Notch, with a polling place that first opened in 1960.
Reason: the owner of the only hotel in Dixville Notch didn’t want to have to drive an hour to cast his vote that year. He arranged for Dixville Notch to have its own polling place – in his hotel. Voters in Dixville Notch, all of them, will cast their ballots Monday at midnight, the start of Tuesday morning. In the same wooden ballot box used 64 years ago. A quick tally, and voila: the first result in New Hampshire is in.
It’s a tradition, and American politics loves traditions, with hurdles if necessary. Dixville Notch’s hotel has been closed since 2011 pending restoration, and for a while there were suddenly not enough voters in the village. The required minimum is 5, and there were only 4 living there, three of whom were in the same family. At the last minute, a fifth showed up, the man who saved the tradition, and since then a sixth voter has been added. Watch for it next week, Dixville Notch will make the news.
The saving guy’s name is Len Otten. Entrepreneur, investor in that hotel, and scion of the Otten families of Gelderland, Overijssel and Utrecht. Westbroek, Veenendaal, Varsseveld, Beekbergen, Hardenberg, Zwartsluis, Dutch towns from where a direct line runs to the news next Tuesday morning at midnight.
* E.A. van Abbenes is an historian and a writer.
