Face masks strongly recommended, but mostly not required on election day

LACONIA — Local officials are strongly encouraging those who vote in person on Nov. 3 to wear a facial covering, but most aren’t absolutely requiring it.

New Hampshire Secretary of State William M. Gardner and Attorney General Gordon MacDonald posted online guidance saying any mask requirement would be made at the local level.

“The moderator has broad authority to manage the polling location,” the post states. “This includes choosing to not require or to require a face covering/mask in order to enter the polling place.

“Moderators should use their best judgment to determine whether and to what extent to encourage or mandate face coverings/masks.”

If such a requirement was put in place, unmasked voters would have to be given an alternative way to cast their ballots.

The Belmont town clerk’s office will be providing such an opportunity.

Voters who won’t wear a mask will be given an absentee ballot they can fill out in their car and give to a waiting election official who will bring it inside, the town clerk’s office said.

Republican Rep. Tim Lang, the moderator in Sanbornton, said that in the primary, a similar system was set up in his town for anybody who was not comfortable coming inside to vote, but there was nothing to stop an unmasked person from entering the polling place.

He is still considering voting procedures for the upcoming election.

“Every moderator in the state has a balancing act between the Constitution, laws in New Hampshire and public health,” Lang said. “We have to balance that all against the fact that we can’t disenfranchise any voter.

“I think the guidance from the attorney general’s office was ambiguous at best,” he said. “It threw it back on moderators to make the decision.”

Most voters wear masks as do election workers, citizens are not inside the polling place for long and infection rates are low in this area, Lang said.

He said he won’t be wearing a mask unless someone approaches within 6 feet of him.

In Laconia, City Clerk Cheryl Hebert said unmasked voters “will be treated as any other voter with or without a mask.”

“We are asking voters to wear a mask and a mask will be provided for those that don’t have one, but it is not mandatory.”

Staff members at polling places will be required to wear a mask.

In Gilford, Town Clerk Danielle LaFond said that a separate voting booth was set up for unmasked voters in the primary.

“It was a trial run,” she said. “We’ll try to have a whole row of booths for unmasked voters in the general. We didn’t have that many unmasked voters last time, but they tended to come in all around the same time, and we don’t want people to have to wait.”

Kerri Parker, the town clerk in Meredith, said she strongly suggests mask use.

“But if they choose not to, we can’t force them,” she said. “We don’t have another option in terms of a separate place for them to vote.”