Note: This transcript is adapted from a radio script, and may contain grammar errors and formatting conventions that offend some readers.
[DRAMATIC MUSIC…] DON LEMON: And it's really underway. Everyone, take a look at this. You're looking live now. This is Dixville Notch, New Hampshire. Where in just two hours...
JACK RODOLICO: It’s the night before the New Hampshire primary in 2016. And CNN is in a town way up north in New Hampshire.
MARK PRESTON: They have just closed the polls here.
DON LEMON: Like 30 seconds to a minute?
MARK PRESTON: They've just ... Right so we're looking right now. Don, they just closed the polls ….
It’s closing in on midnight. And the people of this town have stayed up late so they can vote when the clock strikes midnight.
MARK PRESTON: Well, here we go. We're gonna see the results Don. Let me just step down here so we can get em for you.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: Here’s the story - in a nutshell - CNN is showing its viewers.
This town is called Dixville Notch and it takes its civic duty very seriously. Every voter shows up and casts a ballot - 100% participation. And the results of their vote will be broadcast to the world live. The first results in New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation presidential primary.
MARK PRESTON: So there you go, Don. As you can see on the whiteboard behind me...
What appears on the TV screen looks like a slice of Small Town, USA.
JACK RODOLICO: A town moderator in a bowtie. Red, white, and blue bunting dripping from the walls. Paper ballots slipping into an old-timey wooden ballot box. It’s storybook democracy - set against a picture-perfect backdrop.
ANDERSON COOPER: ...in a picture postcard town just shy of the Canadian border....
DON LEMON: …small quaint towns in NH....
MARK PRESTON: This is really a page out of a Norman Rockwell book. It’s amazing up here how engaged people are...
And CNN, by the way - they’re not the only ones covering Dixville Notch. Fox News is here, so is the Associated Press. Every presidential election, even international outlets show up at Dixville Notch.
MONTAGE of international reporting
This wall-to-wall coverage might lead you to believe that the vote in Dixville Notch is really meaningful - or unique.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: Maybe it’s the only town in New Hampshire that stays up late to vote at midnight.
JACK RODOLICO: It is not.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: Or maybe the vote tally here will predict how the whole state will vote - or who’ll become president.
JACK RODOLICO: It will not.
Dixville Notch is too small a town to say anything definitive about the election. In 2016, during the last presidential primary, you could count the voters in this town on both of your hands.
MEGAN KELLY: Nine voters. Not a lot of chance of voter fraud.
JACK RODOLICO: Nine. Nine voters cast ballots in Dixville Notch. Yet there are dozens of journalists here.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: Why? Why are so few voters, in this little remote, place getting so much attention?
Well, in part because it’s a habit. Every four years, news outlets know if it’s time for the primary, it’s time to send their cameras to Dixville Notch.
But mostly it’s because this image of participatory democracy - it’s irresistible and it’s great T.V.
AMBI CAR SOUND
CASEY MCDERMOTT: I think we’re gonna see it when we come around this bend here…
Casey McDermott is one of our colleagues here at NHPR. Last winter she took us to see Dixville Notch in person. She drove us far north, north of the White Mountains, 25 miles from the Canadian border. And when you first see Dixville Notch - it’s really something.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: Oh man!
The first thing you notice -- is that there’s NO quaint little town. There’s no stoplight. No town hall. No picket fences. No real houses, either. Just one very big, very striking building, tucked into the middle of a mountain range.
CASEY MCDERMOTT: It’s like a grand resort. One of those old regal hotels
JACK RODOLICO: We first catch a glimpse of it from the opposite side of a lake. Even from this distance, it’s clear that resort is empty.
And as we drive closer , around the lake, along a snowy, winding driveway… it’s obvious. This place has been closed for years.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: Wow.
JACK RODOLICO: Oh whoa that building does not look good.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: So basically what we’re looking at is from the front it looks like this like beautiful castle in the clouds vibe. And then from the back it's like total destruction.
[THEME SONG]
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: When the satellite trucks show up here for the midnight vote, they come to capture the starting gun of the presidential race.
For the most part - they don’t show this. The T.V. cameras pan right past the devastated hotel in Dixville Notch...
JACK RODOLICO: So, we’re gonna tell you a more complete version of the story. It’s a story about what happens when tradition overshadows the facts. About what happens when the national media clings to a symbol of the N.H. primary - in the face of mounting evidence that that symbol has lost its meaning.
I’m Lauren Chooljian, and I’m Jack Rodolico.
From New Hampshire Public Radio, this is Stranglehold.
MUSIC SWELL
CASEY MCDERMOTT: It looks like a postcard out of, you know, New England. It looks frankly like a postcard out of another time…
TOM TILLOTSON: We haven’t been forgotten yet....Things are getting a little bit slow but we haven’t been completely forgotten yet.
NANCY DEPALMA: This is very confusing to me. Am I in some sort of trouble?
ANNE EDWARDS: If the tradition needs to end...then sadly the tradition will end.
WAYNE URSO: The press was - they were willing accomplices. They wanted to see it happen again.
JACK RODOLICO: Behind this podcast, there is an ensemble team. And for this episode, we’re gonna rely on the reporting of someone who usually spends her time on the quiet side of the Stranglehold mic.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: OK. This is really exciting.
JACK RODOLICO: It is.
CASEY MCDERMOTT: It is
JACK RODOLICO: Yes.
CASEY MCDERMOTT: Would you guys prefer that I have my headphones on or not?
ALL: No preference....
JACK RODOLICO: We -- Lauren and I always record with shoes off, but it's optional for you.
CASEY MCDERMOTT: I think I'm going to keep mine on -- but that's OK.
A couple things about Casey McDermott.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: She is -- our friend -- and she’s political reporter at NHPR. She focuses on the guts of elections: voting laws, ballot access, political campaigns. And all of those issues come crashing together in that beat up old building in Dixville Notch.
JACK RODOLICO: That place is called the Balsams Resort. For 100 years, it was a playground for the rich. And the story of how the place became a media obsession -- that all starts with one man.
CASEY MCDERMOTT: So this all starts with a guy named Neil Tillotson.
MUSIC
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: Neil Tillotson. The founder of Dixville Notch’s midnight vote. But he was a lot more than that.
CASEY MCDERMOTT: Neil Tillotson is kind of -- I think of him as kind of like New Hampshire’s Forrest Gump in that ... over the course of his life his story just intersects with history in all kinds of interesting ways ... over the literal century that he was alive because he died when he was 102 years old.
Neil Tillotson grew up not far from Dixville Notch - in a humble, little town in Vermont kind of smooshed between New Hampshire and Quebec. He was born in 1898 and he died in 2001.
JACK RODOLICO: And in that time - he met a lot of amazing people.
JOHN MCCAIN: Mr. Tillotson who was the one who invented the Dixville Notch…
That’s the voice of a two-time New Hampshire primary winner - the late Senator John McCain.
JOHN MCCAIN: ..had the honor of meeting him. He was like 103 at the time. And I said - and I said, “Mr Tillotson ... who was your favorite of all these candidates that you met?” And he said, “My favorite was Mr. Roosevelt.” And I said, “Gee, well that’s really, Franklin Roosevelt was really a…” And he goes, “No! Theodore Roosevelt.”
NEIL TILLOTSON: I saw Teddy Roosevelt. I was probably 16, 17 years old....He wasn’t just something you read about in the paper. Hell, he -- I’ve seen him make a speech!
Neil Tillotson’s story is one of those classic American rags-to-riches tales of a bygone era -- full of dramatic, kind of unbelievable details:
He drops out of high school - leaves home - lands a gig at a rubber manufacturer.
He enlists in the army, pursues Pancho Villa and his men under the command of General John J. Pershing.
He returns to the rubber manufacturer - becomes a researcher there.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: And this is where the rubber meets the road...where Tillotson sets his course as a self-made mogul.
MUSIC OUT
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: Tillotson didn’t have much formal education - but he’s a natural in the lab: inquisitive, creative, a real problem-solver. He even has a lab at home where he tinkers with stuff in his off time. One of his favorite items to work with is latex.
JACK RODOLICO: And it’s here in his home laboratory where Tillotson hits gold. In 1931 - in the midst of the Great Depression - Tillotson dips some cardboard into the liquid rubber and successfully makes the world’s first novelty balloon. A cat balloon, to be precise. It was shaped like a cat’s face -- little ears and all. Turns out, a lot of people were willing to buy these things. The Tillotson Rubber company was born.
JACK RODOLICO: It’s very simple too.
CASEY MCDERMOTT: It’s a very simple idea but it’s something that I think was a kind of consistent theme throughout his life according to the people that really knew him was that he had the ability ... to really capitalize on an opportunity when he saw one.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: Tillotson kept going. He diversifies.
CASEY MCDERMOTT: He at one point was making girdles, which of course have since fallen out of favor but at one point were very --
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: Thank god.
CASEY MCDERMOTT: You and me both -- were very popular.
Tillotson Rubber invents the world’s first latex exam gloves. Manufacturing expands. Tillotson’s fortune grows a lot.
CASEY MCDERMOTT: He becomes this guy who’s kind of a self-sustaining conglomerate. He owned pretty much the entire production line for a lot of his products.
JACK RODOLICO: So obviously, Tillotson was a very creative guy - kind of an artist - who was willing to go all in if he saw an opportunity.
And halfway through Tillotson’s life, when he was a very rich man, he had one of those Forrest Gump moments.
CASEY MCDERMOTT: In the 1950s he’s a businessman…
Not far from where he’d grown up in Vermont, a piece of property went for sale in New Hampshire. It really caught his eye. It was the Balsams Resort - tucked into that beautiful valley in the mountains.
Tillotson had his fingers in a lot of businesses. But not hotels. But, he bought it anyway.
CASEY MCDERMOTT: But it was wildly different than anything he had done before. So he buys this resort. It’s in kind of dire straits financially according to news articles at the time but he takes it over. And then by the time - ya know, we’re coming up on the 1960 election and just to put it into perspective obviously there’s a lot going on in American politics at the time…. Nixon versus Kennedy. And...so it’s something that at the time the press is really interested in covering.
Now, let’s just stop here for a moment.
MUSIC
When Tillotson bought the Balsams - Dixville Notch was what’s called an “unorganized place.” That’s a term of law that means if people there wanted to vote, they had to drive to another town - maybe 30 minutes away or more - just to cast a ballot. Tillotson changed that when he established the midnight voting tradition.
JACK RODOLICO: So the thing Dixville Notch is world-famous for is voting at midnight in the first-in-the-nation presidential primary. And the tradition started in 1960 - but not in the primary. The first time they did it was the general election for president.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: And watching news coverage today, you might get the impression that Dixville is the place this midnight voting tradition was born. But that’s also not the case.
CASEY MCDERMOTT: I didn’t even realize that this was a thing that happened outside of New Hampshire. But I found news stories talking about this happening in Massachusetts, in Alabama.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: Blasphemy!
CASEY MCDERMOTT: All over the country. In Maine.
In these old clippings that Casey found, the morning story on a presidential election day might list vote tallies from a handful of towns all over the country. Some had voted at midnight, others at maybe 3 in the morning. It was a little filler piece while the country waited for real election results.
JACK RODOLICO: But for the press - it was also an inconvenience. They didn’t know what towns were going to vote first, and it was kind of a hassle to scramble to collect the results overnight.
It would have been so much easier for the press if just one town voted at midnight.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: And, according to a few of Casey’s interviews, the attention shifted to Dixville Notch, because of a conversation between Neil Tillotson and a photographer.
CASEY MCDERMOTT: Neil Tillotson and this reporter for a wire service basically came up with the idea that if Dixville did its vote at midnight, this reporter would make sure that their results were the ones that were broadcast to the rest of the world as being first in the nation.
Why would that be? What did Dixville Notch have that all those other little towns didn’t?
JACK RODOLICO: One thing: telephones. And lots of them.
STEVE BARBA: We could give them all the phones they needed to send their photographs.
Steve Barba was the longtime manager of the Balsams Resort. He lived up there and worked closely with Neil Tillotson.
Journalism in the 1950s ran on telephones. Newspapers needed pictures, and those pictures were sent from the field to newsrooms by phone lines.
And the Balsams Resort had its own telephone company. That was huge. It also had its own power plant - and space for teams of reporters to set up shop.
CASEY MCDERMOTT: I mean it sounds like quite literally a media-initiated event in Dixville. Is that fair?
STEVE BARBA: Definitely so and it was for the ease and the coordination of the press.
So… November, 1960. Nixon-Kennedy. When the morning papers were printed on Election Day, all those littles towns voted in the middle of the night.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: But they didn’t get the attention that Dixville did.
CASEY MCDERMOTT: There are newspapers all across the country that have Neil Tillotson and, ya know, eight of his closest friends standing there smiling...holding up these signs that say they voted for Nixon over Kennedy, nine to zero.
MUSIC OUT
JACK RODOLICO: What a nice little story to share with your readers. While you were sleeping last night, this little town in New Hampshire stayed up late, just to vote first. These people really take democracy seriously.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: And it was a story that required readers not to ask too many questions about this perfect little democracy.
JACK RODOLICO: That folksy looking town moderator in a bowtie? He was actually a millionaire.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: All those townies smiling after they voted? A lot of them were his employees.
JACK RODOLICO: And the little landslide for Nixon - nine to zero? What does that have to do with anything? Nixon lost the race to Kennedy later that same day.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: But the story the papers and magazines were telling were not about the details. They were about imagery.
And during the next presidential election, to ensure that Dixville Notch really voted first, Tillotson made sure his town voted at midnight in the primary. Months before the general election.
CASEY MCDERMOTT: It was kind of off to the races. By the time the 1964 primary rolled around in New Hampshire, Dixville was like on the map...as the face of the New Hampshire primary.
JACK RODOLICO: If there’s anything that gets the attention of presidential candidates, it’s a photo op. The chance to be seen in a favorable light by a big audience - that’s what it’s all about when you’re running for president.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: And so when Casey says it was off to the races, she means it. Every four years, the presidential race came to Dixville’s doorstep.
TOM TILLOTSON: Been a while since I looked at these pictures. They’re not arranged in chronological order.
This is Tom Tillotson. Neil Tillotson’s son. He’s one of the only residents left up in Dixville Notch. And he showed us this wall of pictures.
JACK RODOLICO: They’re kind of like, part family photo album - and part history textbook.
TOM TILLOTSON: That’s my dad talking to Reagan. He came here twice. Once during the primary and then he came back for the general election.
Bill Clinton came to Dixville Notch. John McCain. Both Bushes.
Each election cycle, it was like the circus came to town.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: No - really - one candidate brought an elephant.
TOM TILLOTSON: He brought in an elephant.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: To Dixville Notch?
TOM TILLOTSON: Right into the hotel.... This is Popsicle, the 700-pound baby elephant.
So who brought the elephant?
JACK RODOLICO: It was Mitt Romney’s father. George Romney. When he ran for president in 1968, George Romney kicked off his campaign by schlepping a baby elephant to a town in New Hampshire with about ten voters.
STEVE BARBA: Mrs. Romney actually rode the elephant, I understand.
Steve Barba wasn’t there to meet Popsicle. But as hotel manager years later, you can bet he heard the story.
STEVE BARBA: While that was happening there was a local fellow who was a Democrat and he was gonna bring a donkey into the hotel.... Someone heard that he was trying to smuggle a donkey into the ballroom and they shut the elevator off with him and the donkey in it.
MUSIC
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: Remember, Dixville Notch is not an easy place to get to.
But LOTS of candidates make the trip. George H.W. Bush went up when he ran in 1988. And he won - with a whopping 11 votes.
And four years later, when Bush was running for reelection as an incumbent president, he did not forget the tiny town that voted for him first.
TOM TILLOTSON: I was in the shower and the phone rings. And it’s George Bush calling from the White House. [laughs]
Dixville Notch had become like the N.H. primary on steroids. The retail politics - the fawning attention from powerful people. That’s what the primary is known for.
But jumping out of the shower to take a call from the president? That doesn’t happen just anywhere in New Hampshire.
TOM TILLOTSON: He hoped that we would, ya know, vote for him that night. And I had this whole conversation with him standing there dripping wet, buck naked. And so that sticks out in my mind.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: That would. That would.
MUSIC OUT
JACK RODOLICO: It’s been a while - many campaign cycles - since Dixville Notch was a must stop for presidential candidates in the New Hampshire primary. Campaigns mostly ignore it now.
But the press keeps showing up to tell the same story about the little town that votes. And when they do, they usually miss the real story of what life has been like up there.
RAY GORMAN: I miss Dixville Notch.... It's been a struggle for me since. It has been.
We’ll get to that in a moment.
MIDROLL
WIND CHIMES
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: After Neil Tillotson died, the Balsams Resort changed hands a few times. It closed its doors in 2011. Casey wanted to talk to people who knew the place in its heyday. So she wound up on the doorstep of Ray Gorman. She met him right as he was trying to get his dog, who’s blind, back in the house.
RAY GORMAN: Penny, over here girl. Come on. Come with Dad.
CASEY MCDERMOTT: Ray Gorman was the longtime head of security and basically kind of keeping the place running.
///
RAY GORMAN: Too damn cold
CASEY MCDERMOTT: Mmm Hmmm....
RAY GORMAN: Come on girl, I’m right here. Come on girl.
///
CASEY MCDERMOTT: So Ray is one of my favorite people that I’ve talked to for this story because I think he offers a perspective unlike anyone else. ...
///
RAY GORMAN: We’re being recorded girl. That’s it.
///
JACK RODOLICO: I have noticed Casey that when you talk about Ray you put your hand -- you just did it! - you put your hand on your heart....
CASEY MCDERMOTT: I mean I -- ya know, we have these encounters with sources sometimes where you’re just like totally not expecting someone to open up to you and to like open their homes to you.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: Mmm hmmm.
///
RAY GORMAN: Welcome to the Gorman household...
CASEY MCDERMOTT: Oh thank you so much.
RAY GORMAN: We moved in here in June. I think I told you it had a fire before. Which is too bad because I had a lot of pictures of myself with Bush, Dole, people like that. I had buttons. I had a lotta...
Ray Gorman started at the Balsams as a bellman in 1978. And he was let go when the place was shuttered in 2011. Half his life, building a career in the same place.
He had an unofficial job title that really sums up what he was to the place.
CASEY MCDERMOTT: He was in his words Mr. Miscellaneous.
///
RAY GORMAN: Mr. Miscellaneous I used to call myself sometimes so.... I was known -- at the hotel I was the person a lot of people go to if they needed something, alright. They needed a bulb, they needed this, they need that.... And Mr. T. knew that.
Mr. T. -- that’s Mr. Tillotson. The older one.
MUSIC
JACK RODOLICO: So Ray Gorman, Mr. Miscellaneous.
Every four years on election night it was his job to do -- well, anything and everything that was needed. Especially for the press.
CASEY MCDERMOTT: Ray was the one who made sure that the cables were run.... He made sure that the nosy reporters who were trying to spy in the ballot room...he made sure that they couldn’t get in there.... And when you talk to him there’s just such an earnestness.... He really felt like...he had a really important job to do.
///
RAY GORMAN: Oh my gosh I've had guests tripping over cords. That was always a big thing. All right. And that's like the insurance company does not want to hear about that.... Tape my gosh I swear I used to go through a case of gaffer's tape. Each one of those election night.... I mean I had ladies take headers and so on and so forth.
Ray was like a stage manager for the midnight vote. And it was a high stakes show.
RAY GORMAN: Ya know what I mean? The numbers increased and the pressure to produce something for the nation and the world. And you had all these people with all these cameras and I was always worried about safety.
MUSIC
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: But sometimes it took more than it appeared on T.V. for Dixville to dust itself off for the cameras. To project the image that the media expected - of a perfect little democracy, where everyone votes - Ray Gorman was given some assignments that were very miscellaneous.
JACK RODOLICO: Like, fetching someone who did not show up for the election.
RAY GORMAN: I went and picked him up once, drunker’n a skunk, naked in his chair. “Ray I ain’t goin down there tonight. I don’t give a shit what ya doin.” Alright.
A missing voter would be a really big deal for the media’s story. And not just because it would taint the imagery of participatory democracy. Legally, under state law, if your town votes at midnight in New Hampshire, you can’t close the polls until every voter is accounted for.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: That means the show’s dramatic conclusion - the vote tally - it couldn’t be announced if someone was missing. So, who do you think was sent out into the night to fetch the straggler?
RAY GORMAN: I says, I gotta sober him up. He’s naked and you gotta give me an hour.... Sobered him up. Dressed him up. Loaded him in the van, hauled him out.
Clothed or not, the show must go on.
MUSIC
And if Ray was like a stage manager for this show, there were people on the other side of the curtain too. The actors. Or maybe the MC.
CASEY MCDERMOTT: Would you mind just so that I can get your levels just talking a little bit about --
CARL CAMERON: Check, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. This is Carl Cameron from Chevy Chase, Maryland at the top of the D.C. Diamond, right on the Silver Spring-Chevy Chase Line, where it's a beautiful day at about 85 degrees, which is a hell of a lot better than the misery we went through...
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JACK RODOLICO: Carl
CASEY MCDERMOTT: Campaign Carl.
JACK RODOLICO: Campaign Carl!
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: Campaign Carl.
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CARL CAMERON: We're at about 85 and it's nice. And other than that, this is about the tone that I'll talk.
CASEY MCDERMOTT: OK. That’s perfect. That’s perfect.
Campaign Carl is legendary broadcaster Carl Cameron.
CARL CAMERON: In Greenville, N.C., Carl Cameron, Fox News. In Defiance, Ohio. Traveling with the President in Cancun. At the Capitol. In -- where are we? In -- Hiltonhead? Buford!
BRET BAIER: Fox sent Carl Cameron everywhere.
Everywhere. Including Dixville Notch.
CARL CAMERON: The man you see with his hands in the ballot box behind me is Tom Tillotson. He is the son of Neil Tillotson, who began this tradition in 1960.
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JACK RODOLICO: Does he call himself Campaign Carl, or it’s like a network moniker?
CASEY MCDERMOTT: I think he acknowledges that it’s like a nickname that he’s been bestowed with.
Campaign Carl spent twenty years as a reporter for Fox News. And before that, he cut his teeth as a reporter for local radio and T.V. in New Hampshire.
CASEY MCDERMOTT: You have Granite State roots and to understand your...
CARL CAMERON: Oh hell yeah. Listen. I mean, so East Wakefield, New Hampshire, Round Pond, my family goes back there to 1906.
JACK RODOLICO: Carl Cameron built a career off the New Hampshire primary. So that gives him a unique perspective on how the national media covers it. Especially their obsession with Dixville Notch.
CARL CAMERON: Well, it's kind of odd. I mean, you go into this big hotel in the middle of the mountains and nothing else around it...where they've erected voting booths for the exact number of residents, again, mostly living in the hotel. And it was bizarre. I mean, as soon as the clock struck twelve the voting began. And at about six minutes past, all the voting had ended.... And the next morning, it was what everybody was talking about, even though all the radio stations and newspapers and T.V. stations, not only in New Hampshire, but literally around the world would say, “Oh, and by the way, Dixville is very rarely right.”
To us, Carl touches on one of the weird, unspoken parts of the Dixville Notch story.
The national media comes in to capture the image of free elections and civic engagement. But they rarely acknowledge that it all started for them - for the convenience of the press.
It’s part democracy - and part pure entertainment.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: And we are certainly not the first people to notice that.
JOSH LYMAN: I’m going out for some pizza. You want any?
C.J. CREGG: Oh, I’ll go get it.
The West Wing. It won a slew of Emmys over seven seasons. Millions of Americans watched this T.V. show - and still do on Netflix. It focused on the inner circle of a fictional president - a president who had been a former New Hampshire governor, thank you so much.
And in this episode, in this scene, it’s the night before the New Hampshire primary. And two people close to the president are closely watching a little town in New Hampshire that’s gonna vote at midnight.
JOSH LYMAN: It is absurd that 42 people have this kind of power.
C.J. CREGG: I think it’s nice.
JOSH LYMAN: Do you?
C.J. CREGG: I think it’s democracy at its purest.
So these two characters - they basically lay out the real world arguments for and against the media’s obsession with Dixville.
Maybe, unsurprisingly, it’s the press secretary that comes to the town’s defense.
C.J. CREGG: This is the difference between you and me.
JOSH LYMAN: You’re a sap?
C.J. CREGG: Those 42 people are teaching us something about ourselves. That freedom is the glory of God. That democracy is it’s birthright. And that our vote matters.
JOSH LYMAN: You gettin the pizza or...
C.J. CREGG: Yeah I should call ahead.
JACK RODOLICO: Carl - a real reporter, who’s covered the real Dixville Notch - says there is something special about it.
CARL CAMERON: To see Neil Tillotson come out just shortly after midnight, dressed in a fine suit, his wingtips polished, in his bow tie and very, very earnestly...announce the vote. It was a wonderful moment. It really is a piece of Americana.
Carl says Dixville shows Americans that it’s important to take voting seriously. And if it’s kitschy, so be it, he says.
CARL CAMERON: I think the fairest way to look at Dixville is not that it is necessarily a bellwether of the outcome of any election, but it has become a symbol and a ceremony, really, a celebration of what is the New Hampshire primary and what is the culture and the ethics, the law and the way in which America tries to handle elections and democracy.
MUSIC
CASEY MCDERMOTT: I think that one of the things that gets lost sometimes in political coverage and especially in like national coverage of the primary, is that like we're talking about like real people here and real people's lives and real people's communities.
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RAY GORMAN: We had excellent -- boy we had good employees. And we had hard-working, loyal employees. I gather you get that from me. There was a lot of me’s. There was a lot of Ray Gormans out there.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: To the extent that Dixville ever was a real community, it was built around one company - which was built around the personality of one man. And when Mr. T. died, the Balsams did too. In 2011, the place where Ray Gorman had worked for 34 years closed.
CASEY MCDERMOTT: I was interested in talking to Ray because if you watched the coverage of Dixville Notch’s midnight vote, it looks like everything’s fine, nothing’s changed. But it’s been pretty hard on Ray for the last few years since the Balsams closed.
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RAY GORMAN: Ya know I had a very good job at the Balsams and made really good money -- had a lot of tips and that cash money in your pocket. And that’s gone.
Ray Gorman says he works three jobs to make half his salary from the Balsams. And for Mr. Miscellaneous, a guy who seems capable of doing just about anything, losing that job -- really shook his confidence.
RAY GORMAN: And I was successful doing that. And I guess there’s a confidence that I had doing it that - ya know, it all falls in place. God I miss Dixville, you wouldn’t believe -- oh my gosh. It’s been a hard time for me since 2012.... I’m doing pretty well -- I’m getting emotional now, but it’s been --- pshew, God…
Coming up…
After the most recent presidential race, Dixville Notch found itself on the receiving end of a very different kind of attention. Scrutiny that could lead to this hit show getting cancelled.
CASEY MCDERMOTT: She with her hand nods along and kind of outlines a big question mark in the air. And she goes, big questions.
MIDROLL
RENEE MONTAGNE: Good morning I’m Renee Montagne. You’re still going to the polls in the rest of the country but Dixville Notch has already announced its results...Obama 15, McCain 6, Ralph Nadar 0.
JACK RODOLICO: Look - any criticism we level at “the media” - and the way it’s handled the Dixville story - we could point that finger right back at ourselves. Every primary morning, public radio takes the bait too.
SCOTT SIMON: The residents of Dixville Notch, New Hampshire will be staying up late Sunday night.
All morning long, during our newscasts, we announce that vote tally from Dixville Notch. As if it really means something.
CASEY MCDERMOTT: The story of the New Hampshire primary is really kind of like a story about how fiercely people will cling to symbols and to traditions and to icons, almost to the point where the idea of what those symbols represent outweighs...what actually happened. And I think that that's definitely what happened with Dixville.... I think that what Dixville Notch symbolized came to kind of outweigh, you know, what Dixville Notch actually was.
And what Dixville Notch actually was? Casey found that the relentless focus on what the place symbolized distracted the media from a story. A scoop. Everyone missed it.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: Everyone but Casey.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: So when did it turn? Or when did it turn for you?
CASEY MCDERMOTT: Um…
MUSIC
CASEY MCDERMOTT: So a few years ago, I was trying to get a handle on like what kind of investigations the state had dealt with around voter fraud.
Voter fraud.
Remember the Trump voter fraud commission? Around then Casey had this question running around her head.
Does voter fraud every actually happen here in New Hampshire?
So she got a stack of files from the Attorney General’s office.
CASEY MCDERMOTT: And I'm going through them. And I see, oh, there was this case in this town, and this case in that town. And then I come across a few cases in Dixville Notch.... I start looking into it a little bit more and I end up finding out that the state had actually launched basically a full scale investigation...of like the integrity of Dixville’s elections.
And that investigation started the same place the Dixville Notch story always unfolds. On T.V.
JACK RODOLICO: During the 2016 general election, the A.G.’s office got a tip from someone who’d seen a T.V. segment about the vote in Dixville Notch. That segment showed images of the voters in Dixville. And the tipster who was watching recognized one of those voters. And she thought, “I know that voter. And he doesn’t live in Dixville Notch.”
NEWS ANCHOR: Dixville Notch keeping their tradition of 100 percent voter turnout...
I mean, the obvious problem here is that if you don’t live somewhere - you’re not allowed to vote there. And as the state dug deeper...
CASEY MCDERMOTT: Basically the state had questions about almost every single voter who cast a ballot in Dixville in 2016.
JACK RODOLICO: Every single -- all nine of them?
CASEY MCDERMOTT: Well, almost. ...
///
NANCY DEPALMA: Can I quickly? Can I quickly just ask you how long this is gonna take?
CASEY MCDERMOTT: Oh it shouldn’t need to take too long...
///
CASEY MCDERMOTT: I called as many of them as I could...
Casey found that a lot of the voters who the A.G.’s office had questions about had some kind of connection to the Balsams Resort.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: One voter was involved in a project to reopen the Balsams. She rented a home in a nearby town but voted in Dixville anyway.
NANCY DEPALMA: This is very confusing to me. Am I in some sort of trouble? And they said, no, that I was not and they were just investigating.
///
CASEY MCDERMOTT: And then there’s one voter...
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PETER JOHNSON: As far as I know I’m legally a resident here. I’ve tried to do everything right.
///
CASEY MCDERMOTT: ...who apparently has not had a home in Dixville for decades...
///
CASEY MCDERMOTT: When did you move elsewhere?
PETER JOHNSON: I think it was 1991 or 1992.
///
CASEY MCDERMOTT: But he just felt so strongly that he wanted to continue voting in Dixville that he did. And he has other residences in other parts of the state and then as well as actually on Martha’s Vineyard. But he would either vote absentee or he would drive all the way up to Dixville to vote in the elections, but would, you know, go to bed brushes, teeth, go home somewhere else.
MUSIC OUT
The Attorney General’s office shared a memorandum with Casey, and she shared it with us. It’s pretty interesting. Here are the kinds of red flags that the state found when they interviewed some Dixville voters.
JACK RODOLICO: There was an out of state phone number.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: Cars were registered in other towns.
JACK RODOLICO: Voters owned houses in Maine and Massachusetts.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: It was kind of a mess.
But here’s what it wasn’t. It wasn’t all those things you hear when hear about voter fraud.
JACK RODOLICO: It wasn’t a conspiracy. There was no bus collecting out-of-state voters to swing an election. No voters had voted more than once.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: None of the things that are typically hyped up about voter fraud - none of those things happened on the ground in Dixville Notch.
MEGAN KELLY: Nine voters. Not a lot of chance of voter fraud. Carl Cameron we will stay on it and stay on you...
And Casey says that the way quote voter fraud usually plays out in American elections is the way it did in Dixville. It’s really about confusion. And uncertainty.
CASEY MCDERMOTT: You know, as someone who covers voting laws, like there is a lot of genuine grey area in it and there's a lot of like thorny issues that come up about like where do you get to actually call your home for voting purposes?
Do you get to make that decision? Is it based on how you feel?
JACK RODOLICO: Do you have to prove where you live? How do you prove it, and who do you prove it to?
CASEY MCDERMOTT: There were so many examples of the nuance of those questions that were playing out in this community that was so well known as part of American politics.
///
CASEY MCDERMOTT: I guess just to start off -- and lemme make sure -- yeah, this is…
This tape is from an interview Casey did with an Associate Attorney General named Anne Edwards. Ultimately, the state did not charge anyone in Dixville Notch with wrongful voting. But Edwards did say that most of the people who voted there in 2016 should have voted elsewhere.
CASEY MCDERMOTT: Is there any concern that like the A.G.'s office might end up kind of ruining the midnight voting in Dixville here?
ANNE EDWARDS: If the tradition needs to end because Dixville doesn't have enough registered voters to be able to vote then sadly the tradition will end.... And things change over time in communities and sometimes those changes are difficult and traditions end. But the Attorney General's office's responsibility is to enforce the election laws.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: And after the Attorney General’s investigation, there might not be enough people left in Dixville for the town to legally hold an election. At our last count, there were only four voters there.
TOM TILLOTSON: It’s getting to be a ghost town here.
And of those four voters, three are Tillotsons. Tom and his wife and son.
TOM TILLOTSON: It's getting to that time where...the first-in-the-nation primary won't be that far away.
So, will the press show up in Dixville Notch on the eve of the 2020 primary? We don’t know. And neither does Tom.
But here’s the thing. The media attention Tom’s community gets for the midnight vote - it’s not attention Dixville is asking for anymore.
In recent years, when the N.H. primary comes around, Tom says, quote, “The world calls us.”
TOM TILLOTSON: If we got down to three people, my wife, my son and...I seriously doubt that the satellite trucks are going to show up at my house and go into my living room and watch us vote.
CASEY MCDERMOTT: Would you want that even?
TOM TILLOTSON: Would I want it? Sure, if they wanted to do it. Why not? But it's not something I expect they would want to do.
A few months ago, NHPR aired Casey’s reporting on the election inconsistencies in Dixville Notch.
JACK RODOLICO: And after her reporting hit the web, she noticed that it found this one really curious audience. Her story about voting problems in Dixville wound up on a Facebook page for a town called Millsfield.
CASEY MCDERMOTT: There were a few posts that caught my eye a few months ago where. Let me just read this aloud….
Two things you should know about Millsfield.
One. It’s right next door to Dixville Notch.
And two. Remember how we said back in 1960 Dixville pushed other towns’ midnight voting traditions out of the media spotlight? Well, Millsfield was one of those towns. It voted at midnight before Dixville did.
Here’s what the Facebook page said...
CASEY MCDERMOTT: And this is where I really was like, okay, there's something going on here. “In Millsfield any observer can see that we pay careful attention to details in ensuring that our elections are conducted in a strictly lawful manner. First and foremost, we have residents who are indisputably Millsfield citizens...”
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: Huh, shade!
JACK RODOLICO: That's really funny. Keep going.
CASEY MCDERMOTT: “...Millsfield citizens are duly elected each march…”
The post goes on to list all kinds of ways that Millsfield follows each and every election law.
CASEY MCDERMOTT: “For any questions about Millsfield’s midnight voting traditions, please contact Wayne Urso via email at [BLEEPED OUT] dot com.
JACK RODOLICO: And this is all Wayne who's writing this?
CASEY MCDERMOTT: Yes.
JACK RODOLICO: So Wayne has got a chip on his shoulder about Dixville?
CASEY MCDERMOTT: Well. When you...
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: He's just trying to protect his space, man.
///
CASEY MCDERMOTT: Hi, Wayne?
Wayne: You must be Casey!
CASEY MCDERMOTT: Yup!
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: Casey drove up to Millsfield to get to the bottom of all this. And Wayne introduced her to a couple other voters there. Sonja and Charlie Sheldon, who own a B&B called a Piece of Heaven.
CASEY MCDERMOTT: How are you?
SONJA SHELDON: I’m fine
CASEY MCDERMOTT: Nice to see you.
WAYNE URSO: This is Sonja’s husband, Charlie.
CASEY MCDERMOTT: Hi, nice to meet you.
CHARLIE SHELDON: Yeah, nice to meet you.
Millsfield has about 20 or so residents, and almost all of them are voting age. It is a community where people live full time.
WAYNE URSO: If you want to see where the voters in Millsfield live, hop into my pickup truck, I'll drive you throughout the whole Millsfield area, which is going to take all of five minutes. And I'll tell you where each election's official lives and where each voter lives.
So Casey’s interviewing the Millsfield voters - and they’re being sort of diplomatic about the town next door with all its voting problems. And then she said one thing that got a big reaction.
Casey mentioned the A.G.’s report - and how there were was a question hanging over almost everyone who voted in Dixville in 2016. And as she’s saying this aloud, Casey notices Sonja, from the B&B, she starts doing something in the air with her hand.
CASEY MCDERMOTT: With her hand nods along and kind of outlines a big question mark in the air. And she goes, big questions.
///
CASEY MCDERMOTT: [laughing] A big question you say...
SONJA SHELDON: Yeah. A big question, a big question, because, you know, we go by it. Charlie goes by it to go to work every day. And it was -- there were no lights on over there. So we knew very well that there was nobody there except for just a couple or three people.
From the reactions of people in Millsfield, it seemed like it was an open secret up there.
WAYNE URSO: If the hotel is not being heated, if the hotel has no running water, no sanitation facilities, how can anyone be living there? It doesn’t make sense.
MUSIC
JACK RODOLICO: What do you have there in front of you?
CASEY MCDERMOTT: These are newspaper articles that I found on newspapers dot com.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: This girl can find a newspaper clipping like no one I know.
CASEY MCDERMOTT: I love old newspaper stories.
JACK RODOLICO: What is the date of that newspaper clipping you're looking at?
JACK RODOLICO: Before Casey drove all the way up to Millsfield, there was one other thing she found in her research. Something about the history of Millsfield’s midnight vote - and how far back it went.
CASEY MCDERMOTT: This was in November 4, 1936, and this says, “New Hampshire town is first in the nation to vote. Millsfield stays up till midnight…”
Casey brought those articles to Millsfield, and read one to the voters there.
CASEY MCDERMOTT: “It was the first time in history that the American public has been able to read any election returns in the morning newspapers of Election Day.”
And the article basically said that Millsfield - not Dixville Notch, and not anywhere else - that Millsfield was truly the first to be first. That midnight voting was invented in Millsfield.
And when she got done reading the article aloud, Casey realized, the people there in Millsfield - they didn’t know it until she had just told them.
WAYNE URSO: Wow, this is a real treat.
///
JACK RODOLICO: And it sounds like you showed up knowing more about it than they do.
CASEY MCDERMOTT: Well, that wasn't my intention.
JACK RODOLICO: Right.
CASEY MCDERMOTT: It was like just I just wanted to kind of get their thoughts on this. And I thought it would be helpful to have the actual papers there.
And as the revelation dawned on the people in Millsfield, this little competitive edge crept into their voices.
SONJA SHELDON: We were truly the first and Dixville Notch cannot deny that now. Just cannot deny it.
///
WAYNE URSO: I don't want to put blame or disparage anybody. But from my perspective, not only was Dixville trying to hold on to their tradition, but the press - they were willing accomplices. They wanted to see it happen again because that's what's happened.... And they wanted to be a part of it.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: Millsfield went maybe 50 years without voting at midnight. But recently, they got organized and restarted their tradition. In 2016, everyone in town rallied and voted at midnight in the presidential primary.
JACK RODOLICO: And around the time of that election, Millsfield did get name dropped by national papers and cable networks. But usually as only a footnote - or even a foil - to Dixville. News outlets said Dixville Notch and Millsfield were in a race or a fight - which both towns say is inaccurate.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: Casey even feels some responsibility for perpetuating a false narrative about these towns because she was a newspaper reporter back then.
CASEY MCDERMOTT: I will confess that I'm pretty sure that the story that I wrote for The Concord Monitor in 2015 made some allusion to a race as well. So I'm guilty as charged there.
But what Casey has done that very few others have - is she came back to the story and dug deeper. And the thing at the core of all of this - to Casey - is the media’s struggle between symbols and facts.
JACK RODOLICO: And there is one particular symbol that she found overshadowed one very important fact.
CASEY MCDERMOTT: The person that we associate most with midnight voting is Neil Tillotson. And he's this larger than life figure. And that's what he's known for. But he's not the one who started it.
In the oldest article Casey could find - one from 1936 - the story gave all the credit for dreaming up the idea to one person. This was the person who apparently invented midnight voting. Her name was Genevieve.
CASEY MCDERMOTT: I can't get over the fact that Genevieve Natig is actually kind of like the Neil Tillotson of Millsfield.
///
DRIVING SOUND
///
CASEY MCDERMOTT: I thought it would be kind of interesting as I'm reading these stories. It says they gathered in her home or...so it's like, well, there's you know, maybe that's still around. You know, maybe I could actually go and see the house where this all started.... So I'm driving. I'm driving. I'm driving. And then like, right as I got to the town line, I'm like, oh my god that that there it is.
///
SFX: gear shift, door opens
///
CASEY MCDERMOTT: And so I kind of, you know, I felt kind of weird...
///
CASEY MCDERMOTT: Excuse me. Excuse me.
///
CASEY MCDERMOTT: Just going to be a reporter, just going to go walk up to these people and see if they'll talk to me.
///
CASEY MCDERMOTT: I'm sorry to bother you. I am. I'm a reporter who was in town doing a story about Millsfield and the Midnight vote. ... I am. My name's Casey. I'm sorry. I don't mean to interrupt you.
DAVE MAGNON: That's alright Jackie who owns the place, my girlfriend, would love to talk to you.
CASEY MCDERMOTT: Oh, really? OK. I would love to talk to her.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: Casey did not meet Genevieve Nadig at this house. She died in 1985. But Casey met the folks who live in Genevieve’s house now...
CASEY MCDERMOTT: They were also completely unaware of the origins of the midnight voting tradition like on that very property.
///
JACKIE HINES: It would be the Nadigs. Do you wanna go sit down?
CASEY MCDERMOTT: Oh, sure. Sure.
JACKIE HINES: I would like to....
CASEY MCDERMOTT: I’ll sit in the shade over here.
JACKIE HINES: Here pull that over a little bit more. We just had lunch out here.
Casey pulled out her old newspaper clippings. Jackie Hines and Dave Magnon knew of Genevieve Nadig - who become Genevieve Annis after she married. Casey showed them a photo of Genevieve and her husband from The New York Daily News on the morning of the 1964 presidential election. The photo had been taken right here - on their property.
JACKIE HINES: And you see the chimney is.
DAVE MAGNON: In the same spot....
JACKIE HINES: I bet that's the back side.
CASEY MCDERMOTT: Maybe.
DAVE MAGNON: Yeah. Could be.
CASEY MCDERMOTT: Would you mind if I took a photo of that?
JACKIE HINES: No. Not at all.
When Millsfield restarted its midnight voting tradition in 2016, the results didn’t lead news broadcasts the next morning. And while cable networks and national papers were talking about the Tillotsons for the millionth time - no one was writing about Genevieve Nadig.
MUSIC
JACK RODOLICO: According to the old news reports, when she invented midnight voting in 1936, Genevieve was only 27 years old. She was an artist, and a pillow maker. Her grandfather had been alive when Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. The town she lived in had no electricity. The midnight vote she planned was a surprise to the press and the world, but not to her neighbors. She had invited them over for cookies and coffee. They came to her house in the rain. And when the clock struck twelve, they all voted together. And they made history.
DAVE MAGNON: We're all here in this little unincorporated town.... It only happens every four years. And it's not that we have a cataclysmic effect on world politics or anything, but maybe we do. Maybe it’s that important.
///
CASEY MCDERMOTT: Ok we just crossed the line into Dixville and the seatbelt thing is yelling at me...
///
CASEY MCDERMOTT: The thing that I think is actually most striking about all of this is, you know, I was up in the area yesterday and I figured, okay, you know, one thing that I could do that might make, that might help to put this into perspective...I thought, what if I just timed how long it took for me to drive from Millsfield...to the front of the Balsams and see how long it takes to do that?
///
CASEY MCDERMOTT: So the Balsams is right there.
///
CASEY MCDERMOTT: It took, you know, about five minutes to do that.
///
CASEY MCDERMOTT: Five minutes. Five minutes down the road.
///
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: Oh really?
JACK RODOLICO: No kidding. Because when you're in the Balsams, it doesn't feel like there's anything five minutes away.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: No you feel like you’re in...
CASEY MCDERMOTT: Right.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: ...the center of nothing….
CASEY MCDERMOTT: And just to see, OK, you know, how how hard would it have been for a reporter to --
JACK RODOLICO: Tell the whole story.
CASEY MCDERMOTT: Tell the whole story.... If they went all the way up to Dixville Notch, I don't think it would have been asking too much to maybe, you know, drive the few extra miles to check in on the people of Millsfield as well.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: We would not go so far as to say that Millsfield’s tradition of voting at midnight is somehow better or more authentic than the tradition in Dixville Notch. They both deserve credit for encouraging people to do something important: take their voting rights seriously.
But when it comes to that thing the media is so fixated on .. that imagery of direct democracy, of civic engagement, of a whole town coming together to vote for president. If that’s the story they want to tell - with no strings attached - it’s waiting for them. Five minutes down the road.
[THEME MUSIC]
LAUREN/JACK RODOLICO: Casey. Thank you.
This is great. Sorry you should say that without me talking over you
No that’s ok!
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: To see a GIF of Casey’s Neil Tillotson bobblehead doll, head on over to our website, Stranglehold podcast dot com.
CASEY MCDERMOTT: I tried going a week ago and they couldn’t find it and no one knew where it was and they told me to come back. So hopefully I will get my bobblehead soon.
JACK RODOLICO: This episode was reported by Casey McDermott and produced by me, Jack Rodolico. Lauren Chooljian is NHPR’s politics and policy reporter.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: Jack Rodolico is Stranglehold’s senior producer. Stranglehold is edited by NHPR’s Director of Content Maureen McMurray and News Director Dan Barrick. Special thanks this week to Brenna Farrell, who helped us wrap our heads around how in the world to tell this story.
Additional editing help came from Casey McDermott, Josh Rogers, me, Lauren Chooljian and Natasha Haverty. Sound mixing by Nick Capodice and Jason Moon.
JACK RODOLICO: Jason Moon and Lucas Anderson created the kick-ass original music in this episode - including the Stranglehold theme song. Additional music from blue dot sessions.
Thanks also to Fendal Fulton, Jeff McIver, Rick Erwin, Mike Pearson, Steve Delaney, Tammy Lytle, Davis Bushnell, and Morgan Milardo Schermerhorn.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: Rebecca Lavoie is NHPR’s Digital Director and Sara Plourde made our beautifully aggressive podcast graphics.
And of course very special thanks to dad - Barry Chooljian - who helped us name this podcast.
Stranglehold is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio.
STEVE BARBA: I got my mail that day and there was an envelope and the only thing on it was a stamp and it didn't say Dixville Notch it said only, “To you nuts in New Hampshire.” This came from out of state. The U.S. Post Office sent this thing to New Hampshire the people in New Hampshire at the post office figured where where should this go like Santa Claus North Pole, where, where should they send it to Dixville. ... But the only thing on him on the envelope with a stamp was “To you nuts in New Hampshire.”