The sense of jubilation in the offices of The Point as we as a collective staff
watched Barrack Obama cast his vote in this year's historic American election
was palpable. The feeling of hope that has spread all over the world because of
his candidacy has been truly remarkable. This morning it is unlikely that we
will know for sure who has won the contest. We pray that Barrack Obama has done
so but American politics is notoriously unpredictable and the electorate
dangerously fickle.
In the first piece of good news to come from stateside
Barack Obama came up a big winner in the presidential race in Dixville Notch
and Hart's Location,
With 115 residents between them, Dixville Notch and Hart's
Location get every eligible voter to the polls beginning at
Being first means something to residents of the
Voting was carried out in a room in a local hotel festooned with political memorabilia from campaigns long past. Each voter gets an individual booth so there are no lines at the magic hour. The votes were quickly counted, announced and recorded on a posterboard that proclaims, "First in the Nation, Dixville Notch."
Although scores of states have voted early, the two villages are the first to officially announce the results on Election Day.
Hart's Location started opening its polls early in 1948, the
year Harry S. Truman beat Thomas Dewey, to accommodate railroad workers who had
to get to work early. Hart's Location got out of the early voting business in
1964 after some residents grew weary of all the publicity, but brought it back
in 1996. Dixville Notch, nestled in a mountain pass 1,800 feet up and about
halfway between the
"Victory has a thousand fathers but defeat is an orphan."
John F. Kennedy
