Some New Hampshire Cities Broke Turnout Records

New Hampshire usually ranks in the top ten states nationwide with the highest voter turnout.
But yesterday, that may have changed.
Secretary of State Bill Gardner says the state may now be in the top five.
The reason: same day registration.

"I thought there would be somewhere around 75 maybe 85 thousand new registrants at the polls on election day but that number could be as high as 100-thousand or even higher as we tally up the numbers. It's a very high number."

The turnout numbers won’t be official until later in the week.
Gardner originally predicted a 75% turnout among registered voters, now he says it could be much higher.
Manchester had the largest voter turnout in the city’s history.
And potentially, one of the largest in the state.
Town clerk Leo Bernier.

"The exciting thing is we have a 93.67% turnout in city of Manchester, we registered, newly registered voters, we had eight thousand plus, so for us it’s exciting

This year, most of those newly registered voters were in wards in the outer ring of the city.
Bernier says he thinks grassroots campaigning just brought people to the polls.

"During the Presidential election year, New Hampshire was one of those states that each candidate wanted, so they dropped a lot of help down here and they got the people to come out to vote"

In three of the four last Presidential elections in New Hampshire, the difference between the winner and loser was fewer than 10-thousand votes.
Secretary of State Bill Gardner says this year the amount of Presidential campaigning was unprecedented.

"Senator Kerry was here five times after the Presidential primary was over, President Bush was here 8 times, we’ve never seen that before in this state."

High turnout at polling places in Keene, Hooksett and at least one ward in Manchester made town clerks photocopy more ballots or use leftover absentee ballots.
Derry, the largest single polling place in the nation, doubled the number of same day registrants compared to the last Presidential election.
But in some places, like Durham, election officials expected a large surge in new registrations, particularly among college students.
But that didn’t really materialize.
Turnout was at 80-percent, up just two percent from the last Presidential election, says town clerk Lorrie Pitt.

"It was not up an outstanding amount from four years ago, but because of being a college town, we had a really high turnout four years ago as well."

The Secretary of State’s office says there were no major problems or challenges in this year’s election.
Bill Gardner says that may be because after the last Presidential election, officials were prepared for the worst.
For NHPR news, I’m Amy Quinton.