EDITORIAL: Never Responsible Nellie

EDITORIAL: Never Responsible Nellie

This week, at least 55 voters who showed up to participate in the 2022 election process may be disenfranchised — their votes will not count due to a series of failures — and the finger pointing between the Board of Elections, Election Systems & Software (ES&S), and Secretary of State Nellie Gorbea is in full bloom.

Gorbea, the state’s chief election officer, is the first to tell anyone about her accomplishments of modernizing Rhode Island's election process.

Gorbea’s campaign for governor website hypes, “She has modernized Rhode Island’s elections infrastructure, increased cybersecurity measures, and brought both online and automated voter registration to the state.”

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On Friday, Gorbea issued the following statement after the failure became public — two days after she learned of the error:

That is why I am outraged that the state’s voting machine vendor, Election Systems & Software (ES&S), had a programming error that resulted in incorrect candidates being displayed on the Spanish language ExpressVote machine screens in four Rhode Island communities. I am equally appalled that the Board of Elections failed to identify these errors during its statutorily mandated logic and accuracy testing process.

Although I have no legal power over the Rhode Island Board of Elections, I have called for them to conduct a thorough, independent audit of this issue. The Rhode Island Board of Elections needs to explain to the public why this error was not found earlier, what has been done to remedy the situation, and show Rhode Island voters what it has done to certify that this mistake will not happen again.

 

It Is Critical that Voters Have Confidence in the Voting Process

Rhode Island voters should be very concerned about the competency of those running Rhode Island’s elections. This is not the time for election officials in Rhode Island to fail.

It plays into the hands of the conspiracists who try to claim that losing campaigns are the victims of election fraud.

This is not a case of fraud, but incompetence.

 

This Is Not Gorbea and Board of Elections' First Public Failure and Finger Pointing

A GoLocal investigation into the 2020 election found that hundreds or more of out-of-the-country and military ballots were cast via non-secure email.

It does not appear that it has anything to do with partisan politics, but the lack of care, professionalism, and coordination between Gorbea's office and the Rhode Island Board of Elections is becoming concerning.

The ballots were cast not by a secure or encrypted system, but simply by making them as an attachment to any email account from Hotmail to Gmail. These were emailed in from all parts of the world.

 

Gorbea Apparently Only "Responsible" When It's Good News

Gorbea's refusal to put in the time and energy to identify vulnerabilities in the voting system is disturbing.

She was elected to ensure Rhode Island's elections are fair and competently executed, but these examples raise questions about the competency and diligence of our election officials.