New Hampshire is one of only five states that still has a party column ballot. Of those, it is the only one that rotates the columns so that every column has an equal chance to appear in the most prominent position, the left-hand side of the ballot.
The other party-column states put the two major parties in the most prominent position. Those states are Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, and Delaware.
This year the New Hampshire lottery for ballot position put the “other” column in the most prominent position.
One can easily criticize New Hampshire for not giving each party its own column. Instead, only the two largest parties gets their own column, and all others are placed in the “other” column. This misleads voters into thinking there is some sort of association between the various minor parties in that column. See this November 2024 ballot. To see any ballot, just choose any town at random. They all look alike. Thanks to Tony Roza for the link.
One of the interesting things about New Hampshire is that some of the State Reps are chosen in multi member districts.
To see what a ballot for a multi member district looks like, click on the ballot for Nashua, Ward 9.
This is slightly misleading, since the order of columns isn’t the same across the state. For example, all 5 wards in Keene have the columns ordered R, O, D. Manchester Ward 1 has the columns O, R, D; Manchester Ward 5 is R, D, O.
In past years, there were a number of Libertarians who got elected state rep in New Hampshire, usually as fusion candidates in multi member districts. New Hampshire has made it tougher to run as a fusion candidate, but they still have multi member districts.
Terrible idea. Multimember districts are a way for politicians to evade responsibility.
With 400 state representatives, drawing district lines in NH is tough; drawing single member districts would be impossible.
NH also has floterial districts, which overlay several other districts. This is required in order to balance out each county’s allotment of representatives while keeping districts proportional (districts cannot cross county lines in NH).