Republican candidates Jim Creighton, Riche Colcombe and James Fedolfi won the three seats in House Hillsborough District 30, which includes Antrim and Bennington.
With 100 percent of the vote tallied, WMUR reports that Creighton led the way with 2,277 votes, followed by Colcombe with 2,268 and Fedolfi with 2,064. Creighton and Fedolfi are incumbents.
Democrat Peter J. Koutroubas was fourth with 1,944 votes, followed by fellow Democrats Jonathan Manley with 1,930 and Ckristopher Wallenstein.
In Antrim, there were 1,723 registered voters and 1,291 ballots were cast. Jim Creighton earned the most votes with 622, followed by Koutroubas with 608 and Manley with 592.
Antrim has an electronic ballot machine—one of only two in the area— that produced voting results as soon as the polls closed Tuesday evening, said Moderator Arthur Merrill. On Tuesday afternoon, Merrill said it was much busier than what he has seen in the past.
“It makes the day go by faster ,” he said, adding that 700 people had voted by 1 p.m. and that no problems had come up at that time. “There are always questions, but we have a law book here that gets used every now and then. But most of the time we can answer people’s questions.”
One of the things Merrill said was new over the past couple of years was the way the electronic ballot machine counts votes. In the past, he said, if someone voted for four candidates when there were only three choices, for instance, the machine wouldn’t count the votes. Now, he said, the machine kicks unclear votes out and it’s up to him to decide.
“If someone votes for four people when there are only three choices it’s up to me to figure it out,” he said “But this usually isn’t hard. We’ve only had three or four instances where this was the case.”
In Bennington, John J. Cronin III, who has been the moderator for 25 years, said turnout was better than usual for a midterm election. Bennington has roughly 1,000 registered voters, he said.
“We registered 40 new voters just today,” Cronin said. “I’ve lived in town for a long time and many of those people I’d never seen.”
The vote tallies in Bennington were close, with Creighton receiving 341 votes, followed by Manley with 328, Colcombe with 324, Koutroubas with 298, Wallenstein with 283 and Fedolfi with 274.
Howard wins in District 31
Greenfield and Hancock are part of a new state House district this year – Hillsborough County District 31 – where Democrat Molly Howard squared off against Republican Jarvis Adams IV of Greenfield, a former state representative.
Howard, who lives in Hancock, received 721 votes in Hancock and Adams 400. There were a total of 1,139 votes cast. In Greenfield, where 832 ballots were cast, Howard received 372 votes and Adams 452.
Howard defeated Adams with 56 percent of the overall vote, according to Citizens Count.