POLITICS

Criticism of R.I. secretary of state continues to build

Gorbea stands by her decision to strip voters' complete birth dates from digital file

Katherine Gregg
kgregg@providencejournal.com
Rhode Island Secretary of State Nellie M. Gorbea. [The Providence Journal / Steve Szydlowski]

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Amid criticism, Secretary of State Nellie Gorbea on Tuesday doubled down on her refusal to provide The Providence Journal with a digital copy of the state's voter database that includes critical information that enables the news media — and other government watchdogs —  to detect whether voters are registered in more than one city or town in Rhode Island — or in more than one state.

The information at issue is birth dates, which the secretary of state's office previously has not withheld. 

Acknowledging that the birth dates of Rhode Island's voters are a public record that can be viewed one by one at local boards of canvassers, the newly reelected Gorbea offered up a potential compromise.   

"We are providing a public terminal, available at the Department of State’s Elections Division, that will allow any person to search the full voter file, including full dates of birth, and run related queries during regular office hours,'' she said.

It was not immediately clear if her suggested compromise would satisfy the concerns of her critics, who in recent days included the New England First Amendment Coalition and the House GOP Caucus.  The Journal's Oct. 29 request for the voter files, with full names and birth dates, is still pending.  

In a statement to The Journal late Tuesday, Democrat Gorbea said, in part: "As Secretary of State, I have made government accountability and transparency a hallmark of my administration .... Unfortunately, we live in a technological era characterized by the rapid erosion of personal privacy and the ever-increasing risk of cyber crimes and identity theft.

"The decision to provide only year of birth information in the bulk download of the voter registration database — consisting of more than 790,000 voter records — was made to protect Rhode Islanders from the possibility of identity theft. Nothing in Rhode Island law requires inclusion of any birth date information, or maintenance and delivery of the database in an electronic and searchable form."

Beyond that, she said: "The argument that the omission of birth day and month information could encumber a third-party analysis of the voter registration database is unfounded. In fact, less than 0.5% of the roughly 790,000 voter records share the same full name and year of birth."

Translated: Less than 3,950 of Rhode Island's registered voters have the same full name and year of birth.

It was not clear how many, if any, share the same name and actual birth date. Her statement did not address another historic problem in Rhode Island. Using actual birth dates, a Journal investigation a decade ago found nearly 5,000 registered voters who were no longer alive. And her compromise did not appear to provide an opportunity to match one database against another, such as the Social Security death index or the voter rolls of another state. 

Gorbea signaled her intent "to modernize Rhode Island’s election laws to reflect today’s technological landscape including a full review of what data and information is publicly available .... Until those laws are changed, my office will continue to provide only year of birth information in the bulk delivery of our voter file."

"Government needs to be held accountable, and that includes the secretary of state's office," said Alan Rosenberg, executive editor of The Journal. "The accuracy of the voter rolls is crucial to our democracy, and the secretary of state — the official in charge of them — shouldn't be making it harder to monitor her performance in maintaining them, without public hearings or a change in the law."

"Troubling,'' said the First Amendment Coalition of Gorbea's only-recently announced decision of more than a year ago to stop providing voters’ full dates of birth. "Her position blatantly violates the state’s Access to Public Records Act,'' the coalition said.

It was not clear if her shift in policy came in response to two-time gubernatorial candidate Ken Block's attempt to mine voter records for potential fraud for a conservative research group co-founded by former White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon, and chaired by Republican mega-donor Rebekah Mercer. The resulting report — titled “America The Vulnerable: The Problem of Duplicate Voting" — identified the potential for voter fraud in 21 states, including Rhode Island.

From Rhode Island's Republican lawmakers came a statement on Tuesday headlined: "House GOP Concerned by Gorbea Impeding Voter Transparency."

“Full dates of birth are an important piece of information for the public to be able to access and judge how well Rhode Island protected against voter fraud in our most recent election,'' said House Minority Whip Michael Chippendale.

Added House Minority Leader Blake Filippi: “We applaud The Providence Journal in their quest for transparency, and we are eager to find out what the APRA request reveals."