Board of Elections Cancels Emergency Meeting - Will Machines Work Properly and Will Voters Vote?
Monday, September 12, 2022
There are two big questions swirling on primary eve - will the voting machine technology work correctly, and will voters vote?
There have been a number of errors in the early voting process in Rhode Island and a lot of finger-pointing by top Rhode Island election officials. But, there are also concerns that turnout may be low, very low.
In the 2014 and 2018 Democratic primaries, about 130,000 and 120,000 voters cast votes, respectively. In the GOP primary in 2014, a spirited gubernatorial battle between Ken Block and Allan Fung drew just under 32,000 votes, and in 2018 that number who cast a vote in the GOP gubernatorial primary was just over 33,000. That race was between Fung, Patricia Morgan, and Giovanni Feroci.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTBoth years, Raimondo won the Democratic primaries and Fung won the GOP primaries.
But, voter turnout may be much lower. Voters appear to be exhausted after six years of partisan fighting at the national level. Some of the candidates and their campaigns tell GoLocal that turn out on the Democratic side may be under 100,000. The GOP has no contested primaries for the general officers, and therefore, turnout could be very low.
In 2020, Rhode Island added early voting, but as of Friday, just 3% of voters had taken advantage of the early voting option or cast a mail ballot.
More Board of Elections Confusion
Late on Sunday night, the Board of Elections canceled Monday morning’s scheduled emergency meeting.
There have been repeated errors relating to the programming of the ExpressVote technology and preparation of the ballots
Secretary of the State Nellie Gorbea, Rhode Island's chief election official, blames the Board of Elections and the vendor for the errors.
Joe Vitale, the Rhode Island Manager for vendor ES&S Software, said the company took “full responsibility” for the error.
Vitali told the Board of Elections that they created a template based on the 2018 election that was then updated in English and that they “failed to update some of the Spanish names for the selection where the voter would vote in Spanish.”
According to Vitale, it was up to the Secretary of State’s office to approve the final English ballot — but not the Spanish one.
On Wednesday, retired Judge and recent Vice Chair for the Board of Elections Steve Erickson wrote in GoLocalProv that it was ultimately the legal responsibility of the Secretary of State to review and approve all ballots. He says that is statutory.
Elorza Calls for Old Machines to Be Used, ACLU and Common Cause Say No
Providence Mayor Jorge Elorza inserted himself in the controversy on Friday and called for the state Board of Elections to remove the ExpressVote ballot marking device from polling places for the September 13th statewide primary.
Common Cause Rhode Island and the ACLU of Rhode Island call on him to retract his comments. Removing the ExpressVote would violate state and federal law and violate the rights of thousands of Rhode Island voters who have a disability, said the two organizations in a joint statement.
“If Rhode Island removes the ExpressVote from service during the statewide primary, it would be violating the Americans with Disabilities Act,” said Steven Brown, Executive Director of the ACLU of RI. “Voters with disabilities have a right to use a machine that can assist them voting their ballot, and the ExpressVote is that machine.”
“There have been significant problems with implementation of the ExpressVote and our organizations are deeply concerned about them,” said John Marion, Executive Director of Common Cause Rhode Island. “Despite the problems that have been uncovered in the last two weeks, the ExpressVote is necessary to allow voters with disabilities to vote independently.”
The ACLU and Common Cause said in their statement, "One problem with ExpressVote for Spanish-speaking voters, and which will not be fixed until the November election, is that only the touchscreen, and not the printed ballot fed into the machine, is translated into Spanish. But, the two groups said, that is a reason, at most, for poll workers to encourage those seeking a Spanish ballot to vote a hand-marked paper ballot, but it is no reason at all to discard ExpressVote and the benefits it provides voters with disabilities."
Related Articles
- Second Letter Shows Gorbea Thought Military Voters Could Vote By Fax, But Not Email Voting
- Judge Erickson: Secretary of State Gorbea Should Acknowledge Her Mistakes
- Gorbea Refuses to Answer Questions About Non-Secure Email Ballots
- RI Election Tech Failure Sparks Criticism of Gorbea and Board of Elections, 55 Votes Lost
- EDITORIAL: Time for Gorbea to Answer Questions About Non-Secure Email Election Voting
- “Chief Elections Officer” Gorbea Fails to Report Campaign Finance Info, Including Her Parents
- VIDEO: Gorbea Announces All Active RI Voters to Receive Mail Ballot Applications for November
- Gorbea Outlines March 2 Statewide Special Election Details - $400 Million in Borrowing on Ballot
- Gorbea: Voter Registration Deadline for Upcoming Rhode Island Special Election is January 31
- Block: Has Gorbea Violated RI’s Election Laws, Illegally Coordinating with Dark Money By Redboxing
