New Hampshire election officials have prepared for a record turnout this Election Day by adding voting machines, extending polling hours and printing extra ballots.
Residents can register to vote on Election Day itself. This year, Manchester held registration drives to encourage people to sign up before today. Other communities, like Portsmouth, also encouraged people to register early by extending the clerk’s office hours in October.
Larger towns are preparing for long lines and busy parking lots, as well.
In Hampton, a bus will shuttle voters from the town office to the polls to minimize traffic and parking problems. Derry added another polling place and added three voting machines.
In Durham, home of the University of New Hampshire, unexpectedly high voter registration prompted Town Clerk Lori Pitt to create an additional 1,000 ballots on legal paper using a copy machine. These ballots, which she said would need to be counted by hand, are boxed and ready to go along with the original 7,700 machine-readable ballots sent by the state.