First, I’ll admit that I didn’t watch the press conference yesterday. I have seen plenty of the media aftermath though. The impression I get is that candidate Gemma’s accusations of voter fraud are being swept under the rug, and the whole affair is being framed as a media stunt. Even if it was only designed as a way to garner attention for a flagging campaign, it was a success.
However, I think there might be a little more substance to the unsubstantiated allegations than we want to admit. I’ll take a few moments from my own campaign to pile a little more conjecture on top of the pile of Gemmapalooza. After all, it’s not altogether unrelated.
As much as it was about public relations, I believe that Gemma’s campaign was intending to hasten the speed of the state’s investigation of the voter fraud charges. Investigators are likely to put more emphasis on the case with the added pressure of both the media and Doherty’s campaign. Raising the issue now also lays the groundwork for a legal challenge to the primary results if they turn out to be close.
We should all be concerned about whether there is and has been tampering with Rhode Island’s elections. To me, the most probable and meaningful fraud would be the deceased voter scenario. There are many proven occurrences of the dead rising to cast votes (for Kennedy in Chicago famously), and to my knowledge there has never been a serious investigation to see if it’s happening in Rhode Island.
With a long entrenched and dominant Democratic machine in the State, Rhode Island would be fertile ground for such fraud. Former AG James O’Neil thinks so evidently, and I’m not sure he would risk tarnishing his reputation without good reason. If it is discovered that we have a lot of zombie voters, I don’t think that the crime will be pinned to Representative Cicilline. It is more likely to fall on the state Democratic Party.
All in all, I’d say that Gemma’s antics are going to once again hurt the Democrats’ chances of hanging onto the District 1 seat. The silver lining will hopefully be that we have a more honest election.
ps- As I read it, the horrendous Voter ID law we have would do little to stop the occurrence of the dead voting, as I expect they would mostly be mail-in ballots. The law does not specify that anything more than the mail-in ballot application needs to be submitted to the board of canvassers to vote. Am I reading the law wrong?
This diary is garbage.
Alias Smith, forgive me – but I do not understand your attribution with the demonstrative pronoun “this” – can you clarify what you mean? Is it Abel Collins’s reflections (which seem to me well reasoned and clear, whether or not one agrees) or the whole rolling feature concept used in the banner by RI Future (in which case that seems just too general an accuastion)? Or, still, Candidate Gemma’s alleged notes on the matter? Am not being facetious but am genuinely trying to follow what you mean here, as I find the entire issue fascinating. Perhaps I have missed a thread or a reference; can you clarify what you mean by THIS diary? Many thanks.
Hi Cheryl,
Abel’s piece is such an obvious piece of garbage that it doesn’t even merit the time required to write a specific response to it. However, since you seem sincere, I will try to break down why it is garbage.
The dead as you say it haven’t been able to vote since about 2006. With the implementation of the RI Central Voter Registration System two things were done to mitigate any fraud. First the list was thoroughly de-duplicated. Second regular updates from the Social Security Death Index are loaded against the list, and matches are discarded. So the dead aren’t voting.
With regard to Gemma’s fraud ‘investigation’ I should preface by saying I have a 2010 version of the RI Central Voter Registration Database on my computer. You can get your own for $25 from the RI Secretary of State’s Voter and Elections division.
Anyhow the two people they mentioned as having registered to vote out of a business address – in one instance they had the wrong spelling of a first name and I found her on Hartford Ave, the other one said 310 Cranston St, when he voter actually lived at 340 Cranston St.
I corresponded with Anthony Sionni on facebook and he tells me they use this service called Smartvan. I think Smartvan has some data integrity issues.
And as to the nebulous “I saw people vote three times in different places” I think that one is a stretch.
And RI’s Voter ID law does open up some fairly dramatic fraud holes. I’ll leave it to your intellect and imagination to figure out how it does that. Hit sos.ri.gov/elections/voterid/ for more information.
Truthspew is 100% correct. Dead people are not voting. The process he described is spot on.
Another reason that this diary, along with the Gemma campaign, falls under the garbage category.