Tiny town of just six voters has its votes counted - and it was a tie

A tiny town has delivered the first results in the 2024 US presidential election.

In the frosty early hours, as November's chill whispered through the White Mountains of New Hampshire, the quaint village of Dixville Notch upheld its unique tradition: striking the clock at midnight and casting the very first votes in the 2024 US presidential election.

Les Otten casts the first of six ballots in the tiny town. Credit: John Tully / Getty

This year, the tiny hamlet, perched on the northern tip near the Canadian border, delivered a perfectly even split: three votes for Kamala Harris and three for Donald Trump -- revealing a riveting deadlock that took just 12 minutes to tally.

This tie was a stark contrast to the 2020 elections, where all five Dixville votes had swung unanimously towards Joe Biden.

Remarkably, four of this year's six voters are registered Republicans, the other two being independents — a dynamic shift noted by the Washington Post. The result resonates with a nation split down the middle, a snapshot of the divided sentiment reverberating across the polls.

Dixville Notch, New Hampshire attracts media attention every election for its midnight tradition. Credit: John Tully / Getty

Dixville Notch has been an electoral curiosity since 1960, when Neil Tillotson began the tradition of midnight voting at his Balsams Grand Resort Hotel.

This ritual, originally meant to accommodate the schedules of railroad workers in nearby Hart’s Location, turned into a spectacle of early results, offering the first hint of the national electoral mood and attracting the media - eager to broadcast these predawn insights.

While the Dixville vote doesn’t always predict the eventual presidential winner — it famously misfired in 2016 when Hillary Clinton led Trump in this village — the ritual remains a cherished emblem of democratic participation.

This year, all six voters from the village, now residing in the historic hotel, partook in this ritual.

The votes are tallied. Credit: John Tully / Getty

Scott Maxwell, one of the voters, expressed his astonishment at the tie: “I didn’t see that coming,” he confessed to the New York Times, reflecting on his own surprising decision to vote for Trump.

Another voter, Les Otten, emphasized the broader significance of their midnight vote to CNN, saying: "If we can help people get out and understand that voting is an important part of their right as an American citizen, that’s perhaps the key to what we’re doing."

"Nowhere in the Pledge of Allegiance does it say anything about pledging your allegiance to a person,” Otten added. "And I think at the end of the day, Trump has made it clear that you need to pledge allegiance to him, and he alone can fix this, and that is as anti-democratic as I can understand."

As the rest of America slept, Dixville Notch cast its votes in the glow of tradition, continuing to serve as a fascinating, though tiny, bellwether for the national vote.

Featured image credit: John Tully / Getty