Dueling bills call for early voting

Rhode Island lawmakers this year will likely be confronted with two competing proposals to make it easier to vote before Election Day, as state elections officials warn of possible calamity if laws are not changed before 2020.

As she has the last several years, Secretary of State Nellie Gorbea is promoting legislation that would add Rhode Island to the list of states with early in-person voting, in this case at city or town halls 20 days before a general election or primary.

But unlike last year, when it backed Gorbea's legislation, the state Board of Elections plans to put forth its own bill this year, which would let voters cast their ballot in person at town halls 20 days before an election — but would not call it early voting.

BOE Executive Director Robert Rapoza, addressing board members before they approved their legislative agenda for 2019, described their earlier voting proposal as a "process change" to make the state's emergency mail ballot system more efficient as it booms in popularity.

But in practical terms, the BOE's process change would make voting before Election Day look a lot like what would be allowed under Gorbea's early-voting legislation.

Under both proposals, voters would be able to walk into their city or town hall 20 days before the election and cast a ballot in a vote-counting machine after showing a photo ID, just as they do on Election Day. 

The Board of Elections' bill has not been introduced yet, but, based on Rapoza's description, it differs from Gorbea's bill in that it would not require local canvassers to be open the weekend before an election to allow early voting.

Both proposals contrast with the current system, which requires Rhode Islanders looking to vote early to fill out, sign and seal an emergency mail ballot at city or town halls before Election Day. Like regular absentee mail ballots, emergency mail ballots are not subject to the state's voter ID law.

Since Rhode Island made voting by emergency mail ballots easier in 2011 by loosening the requirement to explain why someone can't vote on Election Day, it has become increasingly popular among residents — and more time-consuming for state and local elections officials. The system requires local elections workers to print out their own emergency ballots, and after they are filled out, to deliver them to the Board of Elections in Providence to be counted and have the signatures on them matched.

If there is a problem, neither voters nor elections officials are likely to realize it until the ballots reach Providence.

Last year, Board of Elections staff had to remake by hand more than 1,000 ballots that weren't scanning properly, creating an all-hands-on-deck scramble in and around Election Day.

"People don't realize how close to disaster we came," Board of Elections member Steven Erickson said Thursday about last year's struggle to remake, count and certify mail ballots.

Rapoza said if trends continue into the 2020 election, and neither the BOE nor the Gorbea bill is passed, the board will have to hire a second shift of workers to deal with mail ballots.

So why the separate BOE bill when Gorbea's early-voting bill would also relieve the mail ballot crunch?

Rapoza declined to say.

"No comment," Nicole Lagace, Gorbea's communications director, told The Journal Friday about the dueling bills.

John Marion, executive director of Common Cause Rhode Island, which has supported early voting for years, said his organization sticks by Gorbea's bill, but would support either piece of legislation over the status quo.

"Our preference is the secretary's bill because of the additional benefits of weekend hours and that it's labeled early voting, which we think will settle the question for Rhode Islanders of whether or not they can vote early without an excuse," Marion said. "But our hope is the Assembly takes this as a signal they have to do something and do it this year for 2020. We have to have some change, because without some change, it will be a crisis."