In the 2000 presidential election, Democrat Al Gore narrowly lost the state of New Hampshire, by 7,211 votes. Under the state’s “winner-takes-all” system, all four of the Granite State’s Electoral College votes went to Republican George W. Bush, a victory that would prove consequential in Bush’s overall victory.
This year, some lawmakers are proposing changes to New Hampshire’s system.
A bill from Sen. Bill Gannon, a Sandown Republican, would eliminate the “winner-takes-all” system and instead split New Hampshire’s four Electoral College votes into two groups. The first two votes would go to the candidate who wins the entire state – New Hampshire’s popular vote. The runners-up would go to the winners of New Hampshire’s two congressional districts.
The result: If a candidate lost New Hampshire’s popular vote but managed to win one of two congressional districts, the state would give him one vote in the Electoral College and his opponent three.
This kind of split would be unusual. Only two states, Maine and Nebraska, divide their Electoral College votes based on congressional districts. The others give all their votes to the overall winner of their state.
But Gannon argues that the proposed system would make New Hampshire’s Electoral College allocations more representative of what its voters want in office.
And in 2000, that would have meant that Gore, who won New Hampshire’s 1st District, could have won an additional electoral college vote. (He would still have received three electoral votes before winning the election.)
“I want people in every half of the state to feel like their vote is not overlooked,” Gannon said during a Senate election law hearing Tuesday in which he introduced the bill .
Gannon’s idea hasn’t garnered much public support, at least since Tuesday’s hearing. No members of the public spoke in favor, and of the 73 people who spoke on the Legislature’s website, two were in favor and 71 were against.
But his bill, Senate Bill 11has six other Republican co-sponsors, Senators Kevin Avard, Regina Birdsell, Timothy Lang, Tim McGough, David Rochefort and Victoria Sullivan. And Gannon says he has heard a request for this from voters.
The idea, he said, is this: Residents of the 1st Congressional District, who voted in 2016 for Republican Donald Trump even though the state voted for Democrat Hillary Clinton, should have their presidential preferences taken taken into account if they deviate overall from the State, and the same should be true. voters of the 2nd district.
After 2016, Gannon said, “I heard people say, ‘Damn, if the election had been close, we wouldn’t have made our voices heard.’ Once again, we want everyone’s voice to be heard.
And Gannon believes that if New Hampshire split its votes, presidential candidates might be more likely to campaign in the Granite State, which was once considered a swing state but has voted for a Democrat in every election since 2000.
“If President Trump thought a vote was at stake, he would have been here,” Gannon said, speaking about President-elect Donald Trump’s decision not to campaign in New Hampshire during the general election. “He didn’t think he could carry the state, so he wasn’t going to come here. If it had been (assigned) by congressional district, you can bet your bottom dollar would have been somewhere in (congressional district) 1 in the last two or three weeks of the campaign.
Opponents have raised many questions.
Ken Barnes, a Contoocook attorney, said tying New Hampshire’s Electoral College allocations to congressional districts is arbitrary and could lead to manipulation. State lawmakers, who must redraw congressional districts every 10 years, might have an incentive to create districts favoring one party in order to get electoral college votes, Barnes said.
And Liz Tentarelli, president of the League of Women Voters of New Hampshire, argued that the idea wouldn’t necessarily lead to better voter representation. Instead, if all states adopted it, the model would simply ensure that the choice of the U.S. president would be determined by the choice of the House of Representatives, she said.
For Tentarelli, the best way for the United States to capture the will of voters would be to abandon the Electoral College altogether.
“If the goal is to make voters feel like their voice is being heard, paying attention to the popular vote without the electoral college would, of course, accomplish that,” she said.
But even some Electoral College supporters argued that Gannon’s proposal would work against New Hampshire’s interests.
“The Electoral College was intended to prevent high-population states from being able to overwhelm all low-population states in selecting the president,” said Rep. Alvin See, a Republican from Loudon, speaking to the committee. “This bill dilutes that function for a small state like New Hampshire. If California and New York did this, it might be worth reconsidering in New Hampshire. But for now, I’m against it.
In the 2024 election, the Maine and Nebraska systems each produced a split verdict. Nebraska sent four electoral votes to Trump but one to Kamala Harris; Maine awarded three votes to Harris and one to Trump. In the biggest Electoral College race, the two states’ lost votes canceled each other out, Tentarelli noted.
Nebraska’s system might not last forever. In a dramatic debate last year, Republican members of the Cornhusker State attempted to change their state’s system in favor of a winner-take-all allocation, an effort that was abandoned after a Republican senator of the State announced that it would oppose it. With the election behind them, Nebraska lawmakers renew their efforts change system in 2025.
Gannon has a positive view of Maine and Nebraska’s approach.
“I looked at how they implemented their current system,” he said. “It seems to be working. Some people don’t like it. Some people do. Like all other bills and forms of government.
