AG demands Hampton clerk resign over election law violations: Here’s what’s alleged

HAMPTON — The New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office has called for the resignation of Hampton County Clerk Shirley Doheny, citing numerous election law violations during two recent elections and general negligence in the way she performed her duties.

According to a six-page letter to Doheny dated July 29 from Assistant Attorney General Brendan O’Donnell of the office’s Civil Bureau, his investigation into Doheny’s actions began with a review of two allegations.

The first was the complaint filed on May 3 by former Hampton selectwoman Regina Barnes about Doheny’s handling of boxes of cast and uncast ballots following the March 12 municipal election. The second concerns the May 13 resignation email from former Hampton Deputy Clerk Beth Frongillo, who raised “numerous concerns” about Doheny’s handling of the Jan. 23 presidential primary, the municipal election and the Right-to-Know request Barnes filed with Doheny’s office.

After reviewing these issues, an investigator from the attorney general’s office conducted separate interviews with Barnes, Frongillo and Doheny, as well as with Hampton Town moderator Bob Casassa and town manager Jamie Sullivan.

The investigator visited Doheny’s office and reportedly found evidence of discrepancies with state election laws. These discrepancies resulted in the improper mailing and processing of some mail ballots; the failure to properly seal boxes of uncast ballots; the improper signing of election night activity logs for vote-counting machines; and multiple errors in the printing of ballots by the city and school district, leading to reprints and confusion.

Additionally, the investigator noted that Doheny’s office “appeared disorganized, with documents related to multiple elections strewn across shelves and counters.”

According to O’Donnell’s letter, the attorney general’s investigation concluded that Doheny should resign.

“Your actions demonstrate your inability to diligently and lawfully administer elections, manage the mail-in voting process, and safeguard election records,” O’Donnell wrote. “Your actions are unacceptable and unfair to the citizens of Hampton, who trust their election officials to properly follow all election laws.”

Because of what O’Donnell called “serious breaches” of her duties, he wrote: “You are hereby directed to resign from your position as City Clerk by Friday, August 9, 2024.”

O’Donnell suggested that instead of Doheny, “the Secretary of State, in consultation with the Attorney General’s office, appoint an election observer to monitor the city’s next election,” which will be held soon on September 10, the primary elections for candidates for state and federal offices.

According to Michael Garrity, spokesman for the attorney general’s office, while Doheny was elected by the voters of Hampton, “the attorney general’s office has the authority to seek the removal of an elected municipal official by petition to the court” if the official fails to honor his oath of office and fulfill his legal duties as required by the Constitution and state law, pursuant to RSA 42:1-a.

In fact, the attorney general’s office gave Doheny the opportunity to resign before petitioning the court to remove her.

According to O’Donnell’s letter, Doheny agreed to resign by August 9 when he met with her on July 29.

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What the Attorney General’s Investigation Revealed

According to O’Donnell’s letter, some of Doheny’s “failures appear to have been unintentional, while other failures appear to have been deliberate attempts to cover up or remedy prior failures by election officials.”

For example, during the March 12 municipal elections, City Council President Bob Casassa forgot to collect signatures from witnesses for the activity log when he broke the seal on the canvas bags containing the city’s seven ballot counting machines.

About two months later, when Barnes filed a Right-to-Know request for certain election records, including the activity logs, Doheny realized that the witness signatures were missing. Instead of simply providing the logs as they were, Doheny “personally added an entry date, ‘March 12, 2024,’ and instructed Deputy Clerk Frongillo and another clerk’s office employee to sign the witness lines.” According to O’Donnell, Doheny also failed to add that Casassa had opened the bags, nor that the signatures were added after March 12.

According to O’Donnell’s letter, Frongillo resigned shortly after the incident.

The sloppy handling and storage of unsealed, uncast ballot boxes are cited in O’Donnell’s letter, as are two errors in the language of the city and school ballots that required multiple reprints. Unfortunately, those errors were not noticed until after some of the ballots had been mailed in, confusing voters.

That’s not the only error O’Donnell found in connection with what he concluded was Doheny’s failure to properly supervise her staff during the mail-in ballot process. According to O’Donnell, when a clerk was preparing mail-in ballots for the Jan. 23 presidential election, she failed to include the envelope with the statement sealing the completed ballots. Seventy-nine of the incorrect mail-in ballots were mailed to voters before the discrepancy was discovered.

When Doheny reported the error to the secretary of state, he was told to contact the affected absentee voters and provide them with the correct replacement ballots. Despite these efforts, 10 to 25 were returned without completed ballots that were sealed in the affidavit envelopes, O’Donnell said.

Because those ballots were not in a sealed envelope, O’Donnell wrote that they “could not be legally cast and counted on Election Day.” But according to O’Donnell, Doheny “proceeded to cast those 10-25 ballots by mail.”

It should be noted that a recount of the city elections was conducted on March 27. Under the supervision of the new city moderator Mark Gorayeb, the recount confirmed the results of the city elections.

O’Donnell calls Doheny’s alleged failings “due to a lack of training, a lack of established procedures, negligence and misconduct.”

“These failings,” O’Donnell wrote, “are unacceptable and demonstrate your failure to conduct elections diligently and lawfully, manage the mail-in ballot process, and safeguard election records.”

Doheny has been Hampton’s city manager since 2019. Last year, she earned $67,927.96. Doheny could not immediately be reached for comment.

This story may be updated.

This article originally appeared in Portsmouth Herald: Hampton town clerk to resign over election law violations