New Hampshire cities and towns are not running out of ballots despite worldwide reports to the contrary this afternoon.

   Local clerks in about a dozen communities along the southern border including Nashua and Hudson did express fear that they could be out of ballots before the polls close tonight, Assistant Secretary of State Karen Ladd said.

   Deputy Secretary David Scanlan went to the ballot print shop to obtain and have delivered extra ballots to those communities that request them.

   ``What appears to have happened is the vote in the morning was very large and this caused clerks to be concerned,"  Ladd said. ``These communities aren't running out of ballots and they already have enough ballots to get them through this election.''

     Gardner gave each city and town enough ballots to equal the number of registred Democratic and Republican voters in each town.

    He then added to each community's ballot  50 percent more of Democratic ballots and 25 percent more of Republican ballots to help cover the independent voters who aren't registered in either party.

     What local clerks can also do is take unused, absentee ballots [-] that could run in the hundreds in large towns and city wars [-] and have in person voters fill out these.

     ``We get this concern every two years for every election whether it's a state or presidential election,'' Ladd added.

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