LETTERS

RI election irregularities continue to go unreported

Posted 8/28/18

To the Editor: The November 2016 presidential election was hampered by the electronic voting system's inability to correctly count votes, according to the RI Secretary of State. The situation is acknowledged, but only briefly in the middle of a 14-page

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LETTERS

RI election irregularities continue to go unreported

Posted

To the Editor:

The November 2016 presidential election was hampered by the electronic voting system’s inability to correctly count votes, according to the RI Secretary of State.

The situation is acknowledged, but only briefly in the middle of a 14-page “Elections Administration Recommendations Report,” published six months after the election, and mentioned in similar fashion in a so-called “Update” published this year, 2018. The reports lack detail. There is essentially no discussion of facts, or technical analysis.

After contacting the Secretary of State and the Board of Elections, several times, over several months, I can find nothing else that discusses or reviews the election irregularities. The irregularities include voting-machine-printed tapes, printed just after the polls closed, showing single-digit vote totals for certain races, while other tapes printed only two days later show (more correct looking) triple-digit counts, for the exact same races. These are tapes I personally viewed. Yet nothing about this is stated in any report, because the entire matter was covered in 11 sentences.

They cannot be serious. We’re talking here about a $10 million expense to the taxpayer for the election system, as well as the public’s inherent right to know elections are conducted with integrity. The Secretary of State has a statutory duty to review and report on the election system:  “The office of the secretary of state periodically shall conduct a review of the election system, provide a report to the general assembly…” RIGL 17-19-3(d). This is apparently their best effort. What’s going on?

Bill Nye

Warwick

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