All But Admitting That RI Has Not Been In Compliance With Federal Election Law
At its Monday meeting, the Rhode Island Board of Elections directed its lawyer to propose fixes to the loophole created in 2008, which no longer required proper identification for those registering, in person, to vote … as required by 2003 federal law. Despite baseless attacks against Ken Block, it turns out that his research was accurate. Now that we know federal law was effectively bypassed in 2008, justice is demanded by holding accountable those people responsible. It is now more obvious than ever that formal inquiries need to be launched.
With the lawyer for the RI Board of Elections (BOE) all but admitting that the state has not been in compliance with federal law since the BOE adopted a controversial 2008 regulation, the RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity calls for the immediate removal of any BOE official that was involved with that unlawful 2008 decision. No longer can state officials stick their heads in the sand and pretend that serious malfeasance at the BOE has not occurred.
The Center asserts that current BOE attorney, Raymond Marcaccio (BOE legal council in 2008), current BOE commissioner, Richard Pierce (BOE commissioner in 2008), and current BOE Executive Director, Robert Rapoza (BOE director of elections in 2008) have demonstrated incompetence in allowing Rhode Island’s voter registration process to fail to comply with federal law … and therefore should no longer maintain their positions of responsibility. We also call on current BOE commissioner Steve Erickson to be removed, given his publicly stated reluctance to bringing the RI BOE into compliance with federal law.
Executive and legislative branch leaders should immediately move to have responsible parties relieved of their positions. The Center also demands that the damage inflicted by this evasion of federal law be remedied by proactively and verifiably backfilling missing voter registration information. In further demanding accountability, I challenge the Governor, our US Congressional delegation, and all candidates for such offices to demand that investigations be initiated so that Rhode Islanders can know who else may have been complicit, and why.
