An aspiring independent candidate for the U.S. Senate in New Hampshire is suing the state’s top election official over the decision to block him from filing his candidacy.
Aaron Day, a libertarian activist and entrepreneur who previously ran for Senate as an independent in 2016, has filed suit against Secretary of State David Scanlan in U.S. District Court.
Day is also challenging Scanlan’s decision before the state’s Ballot Law Commission.
At issue is whether Scanlan was right to block Day from filing his intention to run on the grounds Day wasn’t yet a registered voter in Nashua, where he’d recently moved from Bedford.
State law requires candidates for elected office to be registered voters where they live.
But in his lawsuit, Day argues that qualifications for U.S. senator are laid out in the United States Constitution, and “voter registration is not among them.”
“Plaintiff seeks a declaration that [the state’s] registered voter requirement is unconstitutional as applied to candidates for United States Senator,” Day’s lawsuit states.
Read more: Who’s running to represent New Hampshire in the U.S. Senate?
According to Day, Scanlan’s office first rejected his filing June 11. Day says Deputy Secretary of State Brendan O’Donnell wrote to him that his filing “does not conform to state law because you are not registered to vote in Nashua’s Ward 3.”
Day says O’Donnell then cited a separate statute, RSA 654:32, to argue Day missed the “June 2 deadline to register as a voter at your current domicile prior to the opening of the candidate filing period.”
Day contends that law, which deals with changes to party affiliations, is being misapplied in his case.
Day’s suit says he also registered to vote in Nashua on June 11, before refiling his declaration with the Secretary of State a day later. But that filing was again rejected. This time, according to Day, O’Donnell wrote that while “a person may complete a voter registration form after the candidate filing period opens, they will not become a registered voter until the supervisors subsequently meet and approve the registration.”
Day argues that the stance unconstitutionally limits candidates' rights to run.
“Under the Secretary’s stated position, no person who moved to Nashua after June 2, 2026 could become a candidate for United States Senate in 2026, no matter what steps he took, because eligibility would turn entirely on the municipal board’s meeting calendar. The same is true in every other New Hampshire municipality, each with its own calendar,” Day argues.
In an emailed statement Tuesday, the Secretary of State's office said: "As of the filing period, Mr. Day was not a registered voter in the town in which he is domiciled so he is not qualified to run pursuant to RSA 655:17-a."
The outcome of Day’s fight to get on the ballot could be significant. While Day stands little chance of winning the election, that’s never been his only goal..
His campaign is premised on playing spoiler to ensure frontrunner Republican candidate John E. Sununu doesn’t win. And spoiler is a role Day has played before.
In 2016, when then-Gov. Maggie Hassan won election to the Senate by defeating incumbent Republican Kelly Ayotte by just over 1,000 votes, Day — who received nearly 18,000 votes in that election — took credit for Ayotte’s loss.
“I did it deliberately to knock her out,” Day said at the time.
As for this year's election, he says he’s looking for a similar outcome.
‘We have some extreme circumstances, so I am back,” Day said Tuesday.
