Lebanon
Throughout the day, state officials tussled with municipal lawyers over who has the authority to postpone a vote without ever fully resolving the matter.
That ultimately left local clerks and moderators with a decision to make: postpone the meeting and risk breaking election law or err on the side of public safety.
As of Monday night, voting was to go ahead as scheduled in most communities.
“We encourage voters to get out early ahead of the storm to ensure they can get in to cast their ballots,” said Lebanon City Clerk Sandi Allard in an email on Monday.
Lebanon is one of a number Upper Valley communities that chose to go ahead with today’s voting. Among the towns still holding ballot voting were Plainfield, Claremont, Cornish, Canaan, New London and Springfield.
Meanwhile, despite a warning from state officials to hold voting as scheduled, Grantham chose to move its floor meeting and voting to Thursday. Orford did the same.
Conversely, Lyme officials said on Monday evening that today’s floor meeting and ballot voting would go ahead as scheduled.
Piermont moved its floor meeting to Thursday, but decided to keep the polls open today, while Wilmot moved its ballot voting to March 21, and rescheduled its business meeting for March 23.
Today’s storm is expected to dump a foot or more of snow on the region, according to the National Weather Service, which issued a winter storm warning that will remain in effect until 5 a.m. on Wednesday.
The heaviest downfall is forecast for this afternoon and evening, with snow accumulating at 1-3 inches per hour in “near-blizzard conditions,”
“I’m sure it will have somewhat of an impact,” Claremont City Clerk Gwendolyn Melcher said on Monday. “This is a school election with a city charter kind of piggybacked on it. This is not always a high turnout election to begin with.”
She said the city looked into postponing the election but was told it didn’t have the authority to do so by the New Hampshire Secretary of State’s Office, which on Monday offered the same advice to communities across the state.
At issue is a provision in state law that says “all towns shall hold an election annually for the election of town officers on the second Tuesday in March.”
The law is clear that the election of officers and other ballot votes should always take place on that date, Deputy Secretary of State David Scanlan said. That provision does not apply to floor meetings, he said.
On Monday morning, the New Hampshire Secretary of State’s Office began advising towns against postponing booth voting, citing the law and the potential of possible voter confusion.
If individual towns make the decision to postpone, Scanlan said, it could create problems for the state’s cooperative school districts, which rely on individual towns to tabulate results. Postponing meetings also could raise questions about fairness for those who didn’t hear about poll closings, he said.
Several municipal attorneys countered the Secretary of State’s Office and cited another election law that gives town moderators the ability to postpone or reschedule a meeting if a weather event causes unsafe road conditions.
“It’s our reading of the statutes that this clearly allows moderators to continue the business portion and election portion of Town Meeting,” said Laura Spector-Morgan, an attorney with Mitchell Municipal Group, a Laconia, N.H.-based firm that represents towns across the state.
Spector-Morgan said municipal lawyers, including those at the New Hampshire Municipal Association, came to the conclusion that towns and cities can postpone their elections. Together, they asked that the New Hampshire attorney general step in and issue guidance on the matter.
That didn’t happen. Instead, Republican Gov. Chris Sununu held an afternoon conference call with municipal officials in which he urged towns keep their polls open.
“Given that there are differing opinions, the best we can do is strongly recommend that all towns stay open for voting tomorrow,” Sununu in a transcript of the call, which was closed to the public.
State officials did not allow a Valley News reporter to listen in on the conference call.
“We think that’s a very important part of the process, but given those differing opinions, I don’t think we’re in a position to mandate that towns stay open or reverse their direction if they so choose not to, but we do strongly recommend that they do stay open,” he said.
Sununu went on to recommend that all towns post someone at the polls to hand out absentee ballots and stay in contact with area school districts that might rely on the polls for their own elections.
The call added to the confusion and did little to provide definitive guidance to towns, said Hanover Town Manager Julia Griffin, who listened in on the conversation.
“There wasn’t a clear agreement between the Governor’s Office, the Secretary of State’s Office and the attorney general as to whether or not they have the authority to pre-empt a town’s individual authority,” Griffin said.
She called the conference call “awkward” and said Sununu chastised municipal attorneys. Those comments by Sununu weren’t included in the official transcript.
“It was not one of those conference calls that provided strong assurance one way or another,” Griffin said.
Spector-Morgan also said the call didn’t change her opinion on the election law, and was telling moderators to use their own judgment on Monday afternoon.
“Basically the gist of the 2 p.m. conference call was the state can’t agree on what the law says,” she said.
Lyme Town Moderator Kevin Peterson said he would meet with the town’s election committee on Monday night to decide whether to go forward with Town Meeting. He was advised by both the town’s attorney and the New Hampshire Municipal Association that voting could be petitioned, but admitted the state’s argument also could weigh on his decision.
Joyce Tompkins, Piermont’s moderator, agreed, and said the state’s stance helped her decided to keep the polls open today.
“No matter what, someone or so many people will be very unhappy with the decision, but it’s the decision,” she said.
Tim Camerato can be reached at tcamerato@vnews.com or 603-727-3223.