Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Writing Me In Seven Times

If you live in New Hampton, Center Harbor, Sunapee, Greenland, Brentwood, Newbury, Sutton, Gorham, Shelburne, Pinkham's Grant, Bethlehem, Franconia, Thornton or Woodstock, you vote for your representation in the New Hampshire House of Representatives the same way as you would for any other office. You get one vote.

For the rest of the state, voters can give more than one vote if they so choose since everywhere else is in a multi-member district.

I couldn't say whether that breaks the "One Man, One Vote" precedent set by the Federal Supreme Court in Reynolds v. Sims (1964) since i'm not a lawyer, but as a candidate it makes things somewhat frustrating since people are used to only voting for one person.

Here in Merrimack we have eight seats, but you have up to eight votes for those eight seats. A voter the other day who liked me said he'd use one of those eight votes on me and write me in again seven times.

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