PROVIDENCE – The R.I. Board of Elections unanimously approved a new set of protocols for the testing of voting machines on Tuesday ahead of the Nov. 8 general election.
The new written protocols are the product of extensive meetings and numerous emails and calls between the R.I. Board of Elections, the R.I. Secretary of State’s Office and the staff from machine vendor Election Systems & Software LLC, said BOE Executive Director Robert Rapoza. It offers a detailed description of the multiple verification steps that will be implemented during the machine testing process, which will start on Oct. 6.
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As part of the new protocols, the Secretary of State’s Office will now be able to access virtual screens of the ExpressVote ballots to review the content and identify any eventual mistakes. The Secretary of State’s Office has already started proofing the Spanish and English ExpressVote screen ballots.
The Board of Elections will also test vote the ballots. In total, about 20 people from the agencies will be involved in the testing at any moment, said Miguel J. Nunez, deputy director of elections, who presented a summary of the protocol during Tuesday’s meeting.
“The board staff and the secretary staff and our vendor have been working on this for many, many hours and we appreciate the work you’ve put in to make this right,” said Board Chairwoman Diane C. Mederos. “This protocol is the result of a lot of work you all put in.”
The ExpressVote machines were at the center of controversy after a series of errors in the Spanish-language ballots was discovered during early voting in the days leading up to the Sept. 13 primary election, including the listing of wrong candidates and the misspelling of a candidate’s name. At a Sept. 7 meeting, the board addressed the mistakes and said it would implement stricter verification protocols in the future in collaboration with the secretary of state and the machine vendor.
John Marion, executive director of Common Cause Rhode Island, said the new protocol addresses many of the issues that caused the mistakes in September.
“One of the reasons why there was a failure is that the law was unclear about who was responsible for making sure the ExpressVote was prepared properly, so it fell to the vendor and no one oversaw the vendor,” Marion said. “The new protocol makes sure that both the secretary of state and Board of Elections have a role in overseeing the work of the vendor.”
ExpressVote machines will be tested for early voting in the general election locations with a 27-point checklist to check hardware and software functionality. Both the contest and candidate names will be verified, including by Spanish-speaking staff members for the Spanish ballots. The agencies will also test DS-200 and DS-850 machines.
Marion said the new protocol goes even further than many he has seen from other states with ExpressVote machines.
“It reflects that they’ve put some thoughts into the document,” Marion said.
While this protocol will now help prevent future mistakes, the Board agreed that more-detailed written regulations are needed.
“ExpressVote, like the AutoMark, was never in the state statute but it should be put in the statute, and this is something we should work to have introduced in the next session,” Rapoza said.
“The protocol the Board of Elections adopted does not solve the underlying legal problem, which is the law was written for a different type of technology, so the law still needs to be amended to catch up with the state’s use of ExpressVote,” Marion said.
Claudia Chiappa is a PBN staff writer. You may contact her at Chiappa@PBN.com.
