This article originally appeared in NBC 10 NEWS on January 10, 2023 and was written by Brian Crandall.  

John Marion, executive director of Common Cause Rhode Island, discussed the pitfalls and benefits of Rhode Island’s current signature matching system.

“The system worked in part,” said John Marion, executive director of government watchdog group Common Cause Rhode Island.

Marion said he thinks there needs to be a look at the part that did not.

Some suspected fake signatures slipped through in other communities and were approved.

Other communities that rejected a lot of signatures left it at that.

“Jamestown is a model,” Marion said. “We ask ourselves, why didn’t all the communities do what Jamestown did, which was vet the signatures, find the problems, report it up the chain of command? And then we have to ask ourselves, why didn’t the Board of Elections then use its jurisdiction over the whole state to look at all of Matos signatures from all the communities? Those parts didn’t work.”

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