For day's first voter, 'a great honor'

November 4, 2008 03:32 PM Email| Comments (3)| Text size – +

By Anne Baker, Globe Correspondent

While Barack Obama came up big this morning in Dixville Notch, N.H., Tanner Tillotson scored a victory of his own in the historic hamlet: Just after midnight, he cast the country's first Election Day ballot.

Tillotson this morning

“It was a great honor,” Tillotson, said of voting in the village that is his primary residence and childhood home. “My grandfather was the one who started the first in the nation, so it was cool to be carrying out his legacy.”

Tillotson, 20, who was born in Boston and graduated from the Commonwealth High School in the Back Bay in 2006, is a third-year computer engineering major at McGill University in Montreal. He said his name was selected from a pot to vote first, but came close to missing the chance.

“I almost didn’t put my name in,” he said, but added it at the last minute.

Tillotson said that all of the residents of Dixville Notch save one, who voted by absentee, lined up and individually cast their votes. They waited in the next room to hear the results.

Tillotson's presidential choice? Barack Obama.

“It was honestly a lot of things,” he said. “I think you can’t count out the fact that he’s someone the people can believe in,” Tillotson said. “In my mind, that’s a big thing right now.”

Tillotson was not alone in Dixville Notch: Obama defeated John McCain 15-6.