More than 24 hours after the polls closed in New Hampshire’s primary election Tuesday, Libertarian voters still didn’t know who their nominee for governor is.
While vote totals posted on the N.H. Secretary of State’s website this morning show Jilletta Jarvis of Sandown as the victor with 574 votes to Bedford resident Aaron Day’s 486, both candidates are alleging Libertarians were disenfranchised at multiple polling places in the state.
According to the Secretary of State’s office, 1,060 Libertarian ballots were cast Tuesday.
When The Associated Press declared Molly M. Kelly the Democratic nominee by 9 p.m. Tuesday, votes for Libertarian gubernatorial candidates were still being tallied. Incumbent Gov. Chris Sununu, a Republican, ran unopposed for his party’s nomination.
The tallying of Libertarian votes for the governor’s race continued throughout the day Wednesday, with no winner declared, though Jarvis began inching ahead as more precincts reported.
Around 4:30 p.m., Jarvis posted on her professional Facebook page that she’d spoken with Day and they planned to wait for an official call from the state, rather than making any decisions based on the preliminary figures.
She called it a move in “fighting for your rights” as voters.
This election marks the first time the Libertarian Party has appeared on New Hampshire’s ballot since 1996.
In 2016, Libertarian gubernatorial candidate Max Abramson of Seabrook received 4.3 percent of votes in the state, passing the 4-percent threshold required by state law for a party to appear on the ballot. That paved the way for Libertarians to reach major-party status in this year’s elections.
But that also means most municipalities haven’t dealt with three party ballots in more than 20 years.
“We both received multiple reports of people being denied a Libertarian Ballot, of people having to argue for their right to vote libertarian, or poll workers questioning if they really wanted to vote libertarian,” Jarvis wrote. “This equates to voter suppression and while neither of us feel the winner of our race would have changed, it is still a violation of your rights.”
Jarvis told The Sentinel this morning that she received 16 reports of difficulties obtaining Libertarian ballots, including one in Keene and another in Winchester.
Jim Tetreault, Winchester’s town clerk, said he did not receive any reports of difficulties regarding Libertarian ballots. Six Libertarian votes were cast in the town, and he noted that the ballots were available at the polls.
But he also noted that the town’s understanding, heading into Tuesday’s primary election, was that voters who were declared as Republican or Democrat could only take the ballot for their party.
Under an exemption in state law, registered Republicans and Democrats were allowed to take a Libertarian ballot in this election because it hasn’t had major party status until this year.
Tetreault said the town didn’t know that had been carved out of state law.
“If we were unaware of that and we made a mistake, we certainly will own it,” he said.
Keene City Clerk Patricia A. Little said if any voters felt like they experienced barriers at a polling place in Keene, it was likely a misunderstanding of a protocol put in place to ensure accuracy.
Little said the Secretary of State’s office sent out information last week about the Libertarian Party’s unique status in this election, and the moderators were trained on the process.
“So if a voter offered, ‘I want to cast a Libertarian ballot but I do not want to join the Libertarian Party,’ … the instructions were to call a moderator,” she explained.
From a voter’s perspective, Little said that may have been seen as a hesitation or some small form of resistance, but in reality it was intended to make sure the ballots were cast correctly.
Jarvis said she believes most reports of difficulty at the polls stemmed from confusion, adding that information about the Libertarian Party’s new status may not have reached moderators and election officers in a timely manner.
While a few people reported bias, such as being asked if they “really” wanted to vote Libertarian, Jarvis said she thinks the majority of cases were honest mistakes.
Regardless, Jarvis said she’s requested from the Secretary of State’s office all of the write-in votes for governor on Republican and Democratic ballots. Voters told her that, because they couldn’t obtain a Libertarian ballot, they wrote in their candidates on other party ballots.
When asked Wednesday evening for comment on the primary, Day wrote in a Facebook message that “the race is still being contested due to massive voter suppression across the state.”
Echoing Jarvis’ Facebook post, Day wrote that people were denied Libertarian ballots in towns across New Hampshire. He said voters reached out to him about the issue throughout Tuesday’s primary election.
“There are a number of people who settled for pulling a Republican ballot and then writing me in,” he wrote.
He added he’s consulting legal counsel and plans to “evaluate our options” on how to proceed.
Day ran as an independent for the U.S. Senate in 2016. He was formerly the chairman of the Free State Project and the Republican Liberty Caucus of New Hampshire.
His campaign centered around smaller government, pushing ideas such as repealing Medicaid expansion in New Hampshire, legalizing casinos, decriminalizing marijuana and encouraging private solutions to the opioid crisis.
This is Jarvis’ second bid for the governorship, having run in 2016 as an Independent. Starting in 2008, she served on the PTA in the Salem School District for two years.
Jarvis has named employment and the opioid crisis as two of her chief concerns.
She has said that, if elected, she would aim to lower energy rates and property taxes to encourage companies to move to the Granite State. To support entrepreneurship, she plans to cut business taxes for startups in their first year, before gradually increasing the tax rates over a five-year period.
She supports legalizing recreational marijuana, saying the money used to enforce marijuana laws could be reallocated to mental health and treatment for people with substance use disorders.
