ROCHESTER, N.H.—Soutisa Cory intended to vote for former President Donald Trump when she entered her ward’s polling place in Rochester, New Hampshire, on Jan. 23.
It was also her oldest son’s first time voting, she told The Epoch Times.
Ms. Cory had filled in the Republican primary ballot in 2022 to vote for her boyfriend, New Hampshire state Rep. Mike Belcher.
Because she hadn’t flipped to undeclared right after voting that year, by default, Ms. Cory became a registered Republican. That meant she should have received the GOP presidential primary ballot on Jan. 23.
But she was handed a Democratic primary ballot.
“I said, ‘I’m not a Democrat,’“ Ms. Cory said. ”When I talked to them and said it needs to be changed, they said, ‘You can’t.’”
Mr. Belcher, who had accompanied Ms. Cory, said Ms. Cory was sent over to the supervisor.
The supervisor, a local official charged with oversight of voter registration, “seemed to confirm” Ms. Cory’s status as a Democrat, Mr. Belcher told The Epoch Times.
The poll workers informed her she couldn’t obtain a Republican ballot.
In New Hampshire, registered Democrats wanting to vote in the Jan. 23 Republican primary needed to have changed their registration by October 2023.
Ms. Cory said she felt disenfranchised.
“I was in tears. I felt like my right to vote for who I wanted to was revoked.”
Calling for Help
Unlike many other people, Ms. Cory had some powerful and knowledgeable local connections. She called her friend, state Rep. Kelley Potenza, another Republican.Ms. Potenza said she told Ms. Cory: “You’re not going to be denied the right to vote. This is ridiculous.”
Ms. Cory, Mr. Belcher, and her son proceeded to the city clerk’s office to check her registration.
Mr. Belcher said he was only able to make progress at the clerk’s office when he made it clear he was an elected official.
“I placed my legislative ID down on the counter and explained that I’m pretty sure she took the Republican ballot in ‘22 because myself and another friend of hers was on the ballot,” Mr. Belcher wrote.
The clerk then accessed the hand-written records, which proved Ms. Cory right: she was a registered Republican.
“The original, hand-written record was correct, but the poll personnel are going off of printed sheets from an electronic database,” Mr. Belcher wrote on X, adding that the incident illustrates another risk of electronic voting.
Mr. Belcher said the clerk told them that this was at least the second such incident in Rochester that day.
Ms. Potenza also faulted the poll worker who sent a frustrated citizen all the way to the city clerk.
“They could have easily contacted the city clerk and taken care of it, the person that’s the supervisor of the checklist, but they did not,” she told The Epoch Times.
City’s Response
The Epoch Times called, emailed, and visited the Rochester city clerk seeking answers and a more thorough explanation as to how Ms. Cory ended up with the wrong ballot and whether there was another incident on voting day.
Rochester Deputy City Clerk Cassie Givara told The Epoch Times on Jan. 24 that Kelly Walters, the head city clerk, is preparing to send a memo to Rochester’s city council concerning what happened with Ms. Cory.
The Epoch Times received a copy of the memo on Jan. 25. In it, Ms. Walters offered an account consistent with what Ms. Cory described.
“I believe this discrepancy to be a matter of simple clerical error,” Ms. Walters wrote.
“However, I can assure you this is not a regular occurrence. We looked into dozens of similar circumstances on Election Day in which a voter was not registered with the party they felt they should be. Almost without exception, it was found that the paper registrations on file reflected exactly what was on the checklist at the polling location,” the memo stated.
“Our aim moving forward is to ensure that election staff understand that the Clerk’s Office can be used as a resource on Election Day to verify that the information contained in the election database and on the printed checklist are supported by the documentation on file in our office.”
Ms. Cory made clear her frustration.
“I was not only disappointed, but I was upset. I was upset, and I was concerned,“ she said. ”How many people is this happening to?”
Mr. Belcher is currently drafting a letter to New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella and New Hampshire Secretary of State David Scanlan, both Republicans, demanding an investigation of the incident and other alleged cases.
The letter’s co-signatories currently include New Hampshire state Reps. Alicia Lekas, Diane Kelley, Valerie McDonnell, Shane Sirois, and Nikki McCarter, all Republicans.
“While we have heard of report after report of supposed registered Republicans and Independents being spontaneously flipped to Democrat, we have not heard, as of yet, a single report of a Democrat having been flipped to Republican or Independent,” the letter reads.
‘Nothing Out of the Ordinary’
In an email to The Epoch Times, Michael S. Garrity, spokesman for the New Hampshire Department of Justice, said that many voters may falsely believe they are independent when they are, in fact, registered with a party as a result of voting in a previous primary.Although New Hampshire voters can return to an independent status immediately after voting in a specific party’s primary, it doesn’t happen automatically.
“You become a registered member of that party unless you fill out a card or sign a list to return to undeclared status with the supervisors of the checklist before leaving the polling place,” the New Hampshire secretary of state’s website reads.
“Every election there are voters who had previously been undeclared, became registered with a party by voting in a prior party primary, and were upset that as a registered member of that party that they could not currently vote in a different party’s primary,” Mr. Garrity told The Epoch Times.
“This primary, the Election Law Unit has again received several complaints from voters who believed that they should have still been registered as undeclared, but nothing out of the ordinary.”
Mr. Garrity said the unit registered “fewer than 20” complaints from voters who erroneously believed they were independent and were upset to receive a ballot for the party with which they were, in fact, registered.
He said there were two cases of voters alleging they had been falsely registered with a party other than the one with which they thought they were registered.
In addition, Mr. Garrity said there were “two complaints of voters claiming they were given an incorrect ballot, both of which were corrected prior to the voter voting.”
Mr. Garrity didn’t comment specifically on Ms. Cory’s case.
