The contested election between Alphonse Roy and incumbent Arthur B. Jenks of New Hampshire
June 10, 1938
On this date, the House seated Representative Alphonse Roy of New Hampshire after he successfully contested the election of three-term incumbent Congressman Arthur B. Jenks. On November 3, 1936, Jenks—a Republican and former manufacturer and banker in Manchester—had ostensibly won election by 550 votes for a district encompassing southeastern New Hampshire. Democratic challenger Alphonse Roy, a former real estate agent and state representative, contested the results. After four separate recounts by state officials—in which Roy and Jenks traded leads—the state ballot-law commission determined that Jenks had won by 10 votes. He was sworn in to the 75th Congress (1937–1939) as one of a GOP minority that comprised only a third of the House membership. Roy and his supporters then contested the election to the House Committee on Elections No. 3, claiming that Jenks had won based on 34 votes ostensibly cast for him that apparently went missing from the small hamlet of Newton, New Hampshire. Tally sheets indicated that 458 votes were cast, but officials only counted 424 ballots when they opened the sealed ballot box in Concord. The committee headed to Newton in the summer of 1937 to determine how many people actually voted in the previous fall elections. The small town greeted the congressional visitors with amusement. “They came in automobiles and on foot…I have never seen a more cheerful operation,” James Wadsworth of New York observed. “Perhaps they rather entertained the feeling that we had come up there to find whether they knew how to run an election honestly.” The committee eventually sided with Roy, determining that the ballots did not go missing after interviewing more than 400 people in Newton, many of whom cut their summer vacations short to return and testify. The decision instigated a three-hour-long debate on the House Floor. Republicans, such as Charles Gifford of Massachusetts, accused the Democratic majority of attempting “to disenfranchise voters.” The House, however, finally agreed to seat Roy, 214 to 122. He was sworn in a few minutes later; he served for less than six months, after Jenks defeated him the following November.
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