1,500 People Vote For Gaza 'Ceasefire' In New Hampshire

Just under 1,500 New Hampshire voters used Tuesday’s Democratic presidential primary to call for a stop to Israel’s invasion of Gaza by writing in the word “ceasefire” as if it were a candidate.

In total, exactly 1,497 New Hampshirites wrote in “ceasefire,” according to the office of New Hampshire’s secretary of state. The figure represents 1.2% of the total votes cast in the Granite State’s Democratic primary, and 1.7% of the total write-in votes.

The organizers of Vote Ceasefire — the name of the grassroots initiative to get Democratic primary voters to write in “ceasefire” — nonetheless declared the outcome “a success,” given the under-resourced and last-minute nature of the campaign.

“Whether it be our marches, calls to elected leaders, or protests, President [Joe] Biden has not paid attention to the voices of tens of thousands of Americans who want a ceasefire,” Bill Maddocks, a Vote Ceasefire organizer and an activist with the group New Hampshire Peace Action, said in a statement Thursday. “So we used something we know he must pay attention to—our votes.”

Vote Ceasefire came together in a few weeks’ time after progressive attorney Andru Volinsky, a former member of the state’s Executive Council, wrote a letter to the Concord Monitor in December announcing his plans to write in “cease fire” as a protest against Biden’s unconditional support for Israel’s war.

Volinsky made clear that although he supports the president’s reelection, he wants Biden to pressure Israel to end its hostilities in Gaza. Like many other critics of the war, Volinsky has said that he was appalled by the Palestinian group Hamas’ deadly Oct. 7 attack on Israel, but he sees Israel’s response to that attack as excessive . The Israeli invasion