New Hampshire voters narrowly rejected a proposal on Tuesday that would have allowed judges in their golden years to continue on the bench for half a decade longer, according to unofficial results released Thursday afternoon.
The state’s constitution currently imposes a mandatory judicial retirement age of 70, forcing jurists to step aside. State lawmakers signed off on a proposed amendment that would have raised the judicial retirement age to 75, with a measure that passed the House and Senate on a bipartisan basis.
But it fell short of the two-thirds approval it needed from the voting public.
There were 452,031 “yes” votes in favor of the amendment and 237,105 “no” votes, according to a statewide tally of unofficial results published Thursday afternoon by the New Hampshire Secretary of State’s Office. That translates to 65.59 percent in favor of the amendment, which is 1.07 percentage points shy of the threshold needed for it to be adopted.
Had the tally been no more than 1 percentage point away from the two-thirds threshold, then state law would have allowed voters to request a by-hand recount — which means New Hampshire seems to have very narrowly avoided the possibility of a labor-intensive statewide recount on this question.
While hand recounts are common when a particular contest or question is decided by a very narrow margin, some candidates in New Hampshire have taken to pushing forward with recounts, even when it’s already clear that they lost, as a way to further scrutinize ballot-counting devices and election procedures.
One of the lawmakers who advocated for the constitutional amendment, State Representative Robert J. Lynn, a Republican from Windham, served as a justice on the New Hampshire Supreme Court until 2019, when he was constitutionally required to retire because of his age.
Lynn, now 75, said before the election that he has known a number of experienced judges from across the ideological spectrum who have remained mentally sharp long past 70 and would have preferred to keep working.
“You probably have to have a little gray hair to be a good judge anyway,” he said.
Some voters, however, said the mandatory judicial retirement age is a helpful tool.
Tom Palangas, 29, an undeclared voter from Weare who abstained from voting in the presidential election due to dissatisfaction with his options in that race, said the proposed constitutional amendment was one of the reasons he decided to cast a ballot.
Palangas, who works as a land surveyor, said he voted against increasing the mandatory judicial retirement age and believes the cut-off should be even sooner. He alluded to public frustrations related to the ages of President Biden and former president Donald J. Trump.
“You can’t be a president when you’re too young, but apparently you can be a president when you’re 80-plus,” he said, shortly after casting his ballot.
Pre-election polling had signaled that the constitutional amendment was likely to fail, though the final tally published Thursday was much closer than polls suggested was likely.
More than one in three likely voters told pollsters during the final weekend before the election that they had heard nothing at all about the amendment, according to polling by the University of New Hampshire Survey Center. Only 27 percent of respondents said they planned to vote in favor of the change.
If voters had approved the amendment, then all five current justices on the New Hampshire Supreme Court would have remained age-eligible until early 2031. Since voters appear to have rejected the amendment, two justices, Anna Barbara Hantz Marconi and James P. Bassett, are on track to reach the age limit in 2026. Vacancies are filled by the governor and Executive Council.
Amanda Gokee of the Globe staff contributed to this report.
Steven Porter can be reached at steven.porter@globe.com. Follow him @reporterporter.