The New Hampshire Ballot Law Commission voted Monday to uphold Secretary of State David Scanlan’s decision to block Aaron Day from filing as an independent U.S. Senate candidate, because Day is not registered to vote where he lives.
Day also ran for Senate as an independent in 2016. Back then, Day lived and voted in Bedford. Now, the libertarian activist lives in Nashua, where he hadn’t attempted to register to vote until after filing his campaign. As a result, it was too late for Nashua checklist supervisors to formally add Day to the voter rolls before June 13, when the state’s candidate filing period closed.
Day said he was undeterred by the 4-1 vote against him, and ready to ramp up a separate legal challenge to Scanlan in federal court.
“I didn't come in here with huge expectations that this was going to be a win,” Day said after the Ballot Law Commission decision. “This is just a stepping stone, which is why I already have a temporary restraining order drafted, and we will deliver it tomorrow.”
Day was referring to the separate challenge to Scalan’s rejection of his campaign that he filed earlier this month in U.S. District Court.
Day says he’ll argue it’s unconstitutional to bar him from running in a federal election based on a state law requiring he be registered to vote where he lives, because qualifications for U.S. Senate candidates are set by the U.S. Constitution.
“I think we have a very good shot at winning based on the Constitution,’ Day said.
But during testimony during Day’s hearing, Scanlan repeatedly argued that state law controls who gets on a state ballot, and that Day’s failure to register in Nashua in advance on filing his campaign was a failure to follow that law.
“If there is a registration issue that needs to be resolved, the day before the filing period opens up is the opportunity to clean any of that stuff up,” Scanlan told the Ballot Law Commission.
Day first filed his campaign June 10, a week after the filing period opened. His filing was first rejected June 11. Day then registered to vote in Nashua, and refiled his campaign. Scanlan’s office again rejected it, on the grounds that a voter is not fully registered until the voter is added to the voter list when “supervisors subsequently meet and approve the registration.”
While the Ballot Law Commission backed the determination of Scanlan’s office that Day’s candidacy “does not conform to state law because you are not registered to vote in Nashua’s Ward 3,” it wasn’t without some mixed feeling. Commission Chairman Brad Cook cast the lone dissenting vote.
“This case is interesting, I don’t recall one with all of these confluences,” Cook said.
Day’s case has not yet been scheduled for hearing in U.S. District Court. But the question of whether he gets on the U.S Senate ballot in 2026 is one plenty of people are watching.
Day’s campaign is premised on winning enough support from right-leaning voters to ensure potential Republican nominee John E. Sununu doesn’t win. And spoiler is a role Day has played before. In 2016, when then-Gov. Maggie Hassan narrowly won election to the Senate by defeating incumbent Republican Kelly Ayotte by just over 1,000 votes, Day, who received nearly 18,000 votes, claimed credit for Ayotte’s loss.
