(C) Florida Phoenix This story was originally published by Florida Phoenix and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . A guide to the primary for Democrats in NH [1] ['Ethan Dewitt', 'More From Author', '- January'] Date: 2024-01-22 The race for the Republican nomination for president has seized the news cycle. On the heels of a victory in Iowa last Monday, Donald Trump is aiming to finish on top in New Hampshire as well, while his rivals traverse the state to stop him. But when Democratic voters enter polling stations Tuesday, they will find a wall of unfamiliar names on the ballot. And they will be faced with a choice: pick from the nearly two dozen names of candidates running for the nomination, or take the write-in option. If they want to support President Joe Biden, the incumbent who declined to file to be on the New Hampshire ballot, they will have to write in his name. So here’s a primer for what to expect as a voter in an unusual primary, and how we got to this point. Who is running? The Democratic field can be split into three categories. There’s Biden, who is not on the ballot but whose supporters have mounted a write-in campaign. There are two prominent challengers to Biden: Rep. Dean Phillips, a Minnesota Democrat, and Marianne Williamson, an author who ran for the Democratic nomination for president in 2020. And then there’s a slew of lesser known candidates, including: Jason Michael Palmer, an entrepreneur and investor from Baltimore, Maryland; Mando Perez-Serrato, a former substitute teacher and behavioral therapist from Orange, California; Donald Picard, a consultant from Cambridge, Massachusetts; Paperboy Love Prince, a rapper from Brooklyn, New York; Richard Rist, a sculpture artist from Baltimore, Maryland; Vermin Supreme, a perennial candidate from Rockport, Massachusetts; John Vail, of Easton, New Hampshire; President R. Boddie of Atlanta, Georgia; Terrisa Bukovinac, an anti-abortion activist of the District of Columbia; Eban Cambridge of Hayward, California; Gabriel Cornejo of Las Vegas, Nevada; Mark Stewart Greenstein of West Hartford, Connecticut; Tom Koos of Woodside, California, former associate director of field support and repository at Stanford University; Paul V. LaCava, a professor of psychology and sociology at Anna Maria College in Paxton, Massachusetts; Star Locke of Port Aransas, Texas; Frankie Lozada, an entrepreneur from Valley Stream, New York; Stephen P. Lyons, a plumber from Damascus, Maryland; Raymond Michael Moroz of Colonie, New York; and Derek Nadeau, president of Piscataqua Power Limited, of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. There is also a second write-in campaign that has emerged in the final week: the cease-fire campaign. Organized in part by Andru Volinsky, a former Democratic executive councilor and gubernatorial candidate, the campaign is urging some to write “cease-fire” in the write-in portion, rather than a candidate, in order to support urging Israel to pause strikes and fighting in its war in Gaza. How do I vote for President Joe Biden? At a glance, the write-in process is simple. A voter should look below the list of candidates, find the line, write the candidate’s name, and fill in the bubble directly on the right. The best way to write in a candidate, of course, is to print the first and last name, perfectly spelled. But New Hampshire law – and the 2003 New Hampshire Supreme Court decision in Appeal of McDonough – also requires that election officials look for the reasonable intent of a voter. That means that misspellings or even abbreviations should be fine, as long as the chosen candidate can be clearly distinguished from any other candidate running. Forgetting to fill in the bubble next to a write-in vote is also fine. It will just create an extra step for pollworkers in cities and towns that use voting tabulators. If the bubble is filled, tabulators will note it as a write-in and will be able to divert it into a specific pile to be hand counted. If the bubble is not filled, it will be counted by the machine as an “undervote” and moved elsewhere, but it will be still be reviewed and counted by election workers. How did we get here? The status and significance of New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation Democratic presidential primary has been in flux since December 2022, when the Democratic National Committee made moves to change the order of the primary states. Back then, national committee members on the Rules and Bylaws Committee recommended making South Carolina the first state to hold a primary in the 2024 presidential nomination calendar, bumping New Hampshire down to a shared second place with Nevada. The recommendation, which came at the urging of Biden, became official after a vote by the full DNC at a convention in February. Since the calendar change was first proposed, New Hampshire Democratic Party Chairman Ray Buckley and New Hampshire Secretary of State Dave Scanlan have both said the state would not comply with the DNC’s preferred nominating order. New Hampshire has a state statute directing the secretary of state to hold the New Hampshire primary at least a week before any similar nominating contest; Scanlan set the Jan. 23 date in November only once all other states – including South Carolina – had set theirs. The DNC had attempted to persuade New Hampshire lawmakers to repeal the primary statute and allow the Democratic primary to be split from the Republican primary and held later. Lawmakers in both parties declined to do so. When the filing period for presidential candidates arrived in October, Biden opted not to add his name to the New Hampshire ballot, citing the state party’s lack of compliance with the party’s calendar. Now, whoever wins the New Hampshire Democratic primary will likely not be awarded delegates at the convention in August in Chicago. But despite his rejection of the state’s primary, backers of the write-in campaign for Biden, launched shortly after he missed the filing deadline, are seeking to elect him anyway. Supporters argue by doing so, Democrats can deliver a political message that could resonate in the state in November should Biden win the nomination – and that it would save the state the embarrassment of nominating a candidate who may not win. Aaron Jacobs, a spokesman for the write-in campaign, urged independent voters seeking to disrupt Trump to cast their ballot for Biden rather than Nikki Haley, Trump’s closest competitor in the state. “There’s one thing that’s clear coming out of Iowa: Joe Biden is the only person who can defeat Donald Trump,” Jacobs said. “We will keep spreading the word over the final sprint that the best way to oppose Trump is by writing in Joe Biden – not by voting for someone who wants to be Trump’s vice president, supports a national abortion ban, and says they will pardon him.” Challengers say Biden’s age and mounting unpopularity in polls mean that Democrats would be better off nominating an alternative. “I was a campaign surrogate for Joe,” said Andrew Yang, a former Democratic presidential candidate, speaking in support of Phillips. “Joe is a good, decent man, a true public servant, has gotten a lot of things done. But I don’t think he is the right fit for 2024 as opposed to 2020. “ This story was published earlier by the New Hampshire Bulletin, an affiliate of the nonprofit States Newsroom network, which includes the Florida Phoenix. [END] --- [1] Url: https://floridaphoenix.com/2024/01/22/a-guide-to-the-primary-for-democrats-in-nh/ Published and (C) by Florida Phoenix Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/floridaphoenix/