(NewsNation) — Supporters of President Joe Biden are advocating for New Hampshire voters to write in the president’s name Tuesday after he was left off the state’s primary ballot.
This comes after the Democratic National Convention decided to have its first primary in South Carolina, shuffling a long-standing lineup where New Hampshire comes first.
The Biden-backed change created controversy between state and national Democrats over New Hampshire’s place in the party’s presidential nomination calendar. Its purpose was to add more diversity to the party’s calendar by putting more demographically diverse states earlier in the calendar.
But as a result, Biden is not appearing on the New Hampshire ballot.
Frustrated by his absence, New Hampshire Democrats devised a plan to write Biden’s name on the ballot.
Write-in campaigns are traditionally very difficult because they have to convince voters to go beyond just filling in a circle to actually writing the candidate’s name out as well as filling out the circle next to the write-in spot on the ballot.
“I think we’re doing great. I feel really good. We have over 50 events over this weekend in this period, and people, just throngs of people, showed up,” said Democratic New Hampshire Sen. David Watters.
The grassroots effort is helping show people how to vote for Biden
“We’ve done an incredible organization of 303 polling stations in the state. And we have a terrific effort at the local level, to have people out there with our signs to write in Biden in the sample ballot to show them how to do it,” Watters said.
Although Biden is the presumed Democratic nominee, Minnesota Rep. Dean Phillips is also getting some support in New Hampshire ahead of the primaries.
Phillips attended the Trump rally Sunday night and was surprised by the warm welcome from voters.
“Everybody I’ve just said hi to, everybody, was so nice. And this image propagated by many of my colleagues on MSNBC that all these people are either insurrectionists or deplorable, and I know that’s not the case. And that’s just why I’m here,” Phillips told NewsNation. “Everyone’s a really friendly person. It’s what I’m trying to demonstrate to our country. Anger-tainment would have us believe we are so much more divided than we really are.”