Episode 3: The Midnight special
A bobblehead doll of Neil Tillotson, the founder of the midnight vote at Dixville Notch, which was purchased from the New Hampshire Historical Society.
Every four years, a caravan of national news networks descends on a remote corner of New Hampshire to broadcast the first results from the first-in-the-nation primary.
What appears on the TV screen usually looks like a slice of Small Town, USA. A picture-perfect image of participatory democracy, complete with a big wooden ballot box and a town moderator with a pocket watch and a big bow tie. A community that takes their civic duty so seriously they rise in the middle of the night to cast their ballots. And maybe (just maybe) a hint of where the election is heading.
The wall-to-wall coverage of Dixville Notch by some major news outlets might lead you to believe that they started this midnight voting tradition, or that their vote is unique, or that it holds greater weight than of the other precincts in New Hampshire.
But there’s more — a lot more — to the story.
More BEHIND-the-scenes tales from Dixville Notch:
An academic perspective on the midnight vote:
In 1980, two Plymouth State University professors teamed up to examine Dixville Notch’s approach to democracy — and the media’s obsession with it. (Produced by Vermont Public Radio and made available by the American Archive of Public Broadcasting.)
