More than 90K mail ballots returned for RI primary

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Common Cause Rhode Island Executive Director John Marion was one of several participants who took part in a organization-wide webinar Tuesday afternoon to provide updates on primary elections.

Marion was featured alongside several other executive and policy directors – such as Joanne Antoine of Maryland and Heather Ferguson of New Mexico – as they spoke in succession to offer progress reports on how Tuesday’s primaries were faring amid the coronavirus pandemic and nationwide protests. Common Cause President Karen Hobert Flynn and Vice President for Campaigns Jesse Littlewood also spoke during the call.

Marion said Rhode Island’s main focus was the presidential preference primary. He said it was a “test run” for the statewide primary in September, and he said that Common Cause and a few allies had checked in at more than half of the nearly four-dozen polling places open across the state. Marion said Wednesday on a follow-up call that there were 182 polling locations during the last presidential primary four years ago, and there are normally 419 spots open for a general election.

Marion was reminding folks on Twitter as well that, despite 8 p.m. curfews in cities like Warwick and Cranston, voters were exempt and could return home safely if they were out at polling locations.

“We haven’t found problems with the polling places themselves,” Marion said. “We have found that officials successfully adapted polling places for social distancing and because of the consolidation we were able to bring in extra equipment and staff. Sneeze guards and signage for voters to stand in line 6 feet apart, so we whereby with how in-person voting is happening.”

Marion said this year’s PPP saw Rhode Island’s voting habits flip entirely. As of 2 p.m., he said there had been 8,000 in-person votes cast statewide, as opposed to 90,000 mail ballots that had been returned out of the 150,000 sent to voters. Marion said Rhode Island typically sees less than 10 percent of votes by mail, “so we’re seeing a complete inverse of that in this election.” He said four years ago, during a “heavily contested” PPP, just more than 5,000 mail ballots were returned.

Despite the large return of mail ballots, Marion said that a “significant portion” of them went out too late for voters to send back in time. Marion said Rhode Island is experiencing similar issues to Indiana, which is also trying to establish a mail-in system in addition to traditional voting.

He added that one of the ballot dropboxes in Providence was damaged Tuesday morning, but it was secured.

“Right before I joined this call, I convinced an elderly couple to go to their voting place,” Marion said. “Our volunteers and staff are seeing at polling places social distancing being abided by. We’re seeing concerns about people coming in without masks, and those who aren’t are accepting the masks that are being provided to them for the most part.”

Marion noted that Rhode Islanders shouldn't expect results until Friday or Monday, which Marion called “rather extraordinary” since the state usually has that information moments after polls close.

“We’re cautioning local media and national media to expect slow results if you’re looking to see what happened with Rhode Island,” Marion said.

Littlewood said that when voters are having issues, their instinct appears to be heading to social media for assistance before calling the 866-OUR-VOTE hotline first. However, it can be dangerous, as Littlewood said social media can be a source of “false information to suppress or intimidate voters from exercising their rights.”

“Social media platforms have only taken a few small steps to rein in content that damages voters,” Littlewood said during the call. “Today is compounded by the coronavirus pandemic and the unrest of the past few days … We encourage these users to raise up the trusted sources of information when communicating about voting … Voters will still need to be cautious about what they post on social media.”

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