Secretary of State David Scanlan is expecting high turnout and a smooth, safe experience at the polls in New Hampshire for the upcoming general election.
Although the official turnout prediction won’t be out for a few days, Scanlan said this year will likely see a high number of people registering on Election Day, Nov. 5, especially in college towns. Despite the expectation of big numbers, he said he expects the vote to run smoothly across the state.
“We follow the KISS principle: Keep It Simple,” he quipped. “And because of that, the process is transparent. It is observable. We can trust the results.”
Addressing security concerns, Scanlan said he has no indication of any threats at this time. He said he has been in touch with the New Hampshire Police Chiefs Association and encouraged local election officials to work with their law enforcement counterparts to prepare for any potential problems.
“We don’t have any indication that anything is afoot in terms of polling place, security and things like that,” he said. “But we are prepared in the event that we have to deal with any type of an issue.”
Scanlan said a good predictor for turnout is usually how many absentee ballots are requested in the state; so far, he said 85,000 have been requested for this election. His office usually gets more than 90% of those ballots back, which suggests this election is on track to have record high turnout compared to previous years.
Local election officials are also likely to see higher registration numbers on Election Day because of recent efforts to clean up the voter rolls. Scanlan said about 100,000 inactive voters — or about a tenth of all voters — were removed after a routine verification of the checklist following the 2020 census
Scanlan said technological advances at the polls, like electronic check-in systems for voters, will also help make things more efficient. He added that 20 municipalities have new Voting Works electronic ballot counting devices for this election.
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