RI Rebuilding Central Voter Registration System Ahead of 2020: Gorbea on LIVE
RI Rebuilding Central Voter Registration System Ahead of 2020: Gorbea on LIVE
“We are in the process of making sure that our hardware an internet structures are secure — so Stonewall Solutions, I’m proud to say a Rhode Island company from Pawtucket — just won the RFP for rebuilding our central voter registration system, so we are secure to modern-day standards,” said Gorbea. “It was a great program back in 2003 when we first built it but now you know it needs to be upgraded.”
“This is the first major upgrade — we’ve been doing some patches and certain upgrades over time — but there comes a point where you can’t just patch it up anymore, you really have to rebuild,” said Gorbea. “Given what we know about technology today, I think that’s something government needs to do more of is to rebuild certain structures so that they are secure in this world of cybersecurity. There’s no ‘good-time’ to rebuild your central voting registration system because you have elections every two years, so the goal is having it fully implemented through 2020.”
Early Voting -- and 2020
“Early voting didn’t make it through [the 2019 General Assembly session] and I’m committed to having that discussion at the General Assembly next time around,” said Gorbea.
“I think change is hard for a few of our incumbent legislators. They’re concerned about all sorts of things and we’ve tried to walk them off that cliff — it hasn’t worked but you know politics is the art of continuing to have conversations. I also think that getting more Rhode Islanders to come and speak to their members is always a good thing so maybe we can have a little bit more of the voices of people who really understand that early in-person voting is something that Rhode Islanders are clearly expressing they want the use of,” said Gorbea.
“My biggest fear is that in 2020 given the interest in the presidential election we’ll get a really big push at the cities and towns there it’s a very labor-intensive, paper-driven process…I fear that there might be a breakdown somewhere. [We] will work hard against that but early voting would have solved that issue.”