A plaque in the center of Concord, the capital of New Hampshire, reminds tourists that the residents of that state take the primaries very seriously.
Since 1920 they have been celebrated there before anywhere else.
The sign, outside the state Capitol, states that New Hampshire voters “have routinely favored the candidate who ultimately reaches the Oval Office.”
Joe Biden, however, reached the nomination and the White House after finishing fifth in New Hampshire with only 8.4% of the votes.
Perhaps for this reason, as president, Biden promoted a change in the primary calendar in the Democratic Party.
Iowa disciplinedly agreed to no voting in last week's Democratic
caucuses
, but New Hampshire rebelled.
The quarrel over this has ended with Biden off the ballot.
21 names appear on the Democratic ballot, including a
president,
but not by office, but by name: President R. Boddie, of Atlanta.
Also featured is Vermin Supreme, an eccentric activist known for wearing a rubber boot on his head as a hat and carrying a giant toothbrush.
Of all of them, the only ones with some political weight are Congressman Dean Phillips and self-help book writer Marianne Williamson, who already tried in 2020, but withdrew before voting began.
Biden is not disqualified nor has his eligibility been questioned, as has happened with Donald Trump in Colorado and Maine for his role in the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. The president simply missed the deadlines to register for a kind of order. to delay the New Hampshire vote.
Although his name does not appear on the ballot, citizens can vote for him by writing their name in the blank box reserved for this purpose.
Biden has not campaigned in the State, but his allies are carrying out an effort to get voters to do so and prevent him from losing or having another candidate approach him.
A political action committee called Granite for America is sending out three-step instructions on how to cast a write-in vote.
The counting of the Democratic primaries can be somewhat complicated with this type of voting, since the machines do not detect the name, only that the vote goes to another candidate and must be processed manually.
Change the order
Biden urged the Democratic National Committee last year to change the order of the primaries, removing the starting signal from the Iowa
caucuses
(a white, conservative and religious state) to give it to the South Carolina primaries.
The goal was to give more power to black and other minority voters, crucial to the party's base.
In February, the Democratic Party approved a new schedule beginning with the South Carolina primary on February 3, followed three days later by New Hampshire and Nevada.
But New Hampshire objected, arguing that it has traditionally held the country's inaugural primaries, something that is even regulated in state law.
State law grants New Hampshire Secretary of State, Republican David Scanlan, the exclusive authority to set the date of the 2024 primary. As has been the case for 40 years, he has set it for the Tuesday of the week following the Iowa
caucuses
. State law also states that primaries must be held at least seven days before any other primaries.
“New Hampshire has a tradition and New Hampshire has a law, and both the tradition and the law were going to be fulfilled no matter what,” Scanlan said in November when setting the date.
In his opinion, using racial diversity to alter the calendar sets a bad precedent.
“At what point does a state become too old, or too rich, or too cultured, or too religious to hold early primaries?” he argued.
The Democratic National Committee asked its party's candidates not to register and Biden, promoter of the calendar reform, obeyed, but that did not stop the process or prevent the rest from registering.
In a sort of final tantrum, the Democratic National Committee, which governs the nomination process, has decided that even if there are primaries, delegates will not be assigned based on their results.
The New Hampshire prosecutor has accused Democrats of voter suppression.
Biden is not the first president not to run in the New Hampshire primary.
In 1968, Lyndon B. Johnson did not register and still won thanks to write-in votes.
However, his victory was tight and led to him announcing a few weeks later that he would not run for re-election.
Biden, for now, appears to have a large lead.
A recent survey by CNN and the University of New Hampshire indicated that 69% of Democratic primary voters plan to write Biden's name on the ballot, well ahead of Phillips' 7% voting intention and 6 Williamson %.
Against the president, he plays that voters have to write his name.
To his credit, Joe Biden is an easy name.
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