PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) — Secretary of State and Democratic Candidate for Governor, Nellie Gorbea, responded Saturday to Providence Mayor, Jorge Elorza’s call to remove the express vote machines ahead of Tuesday’s primary election.
The machines reported multiple errors during early voting, including showing the wrong names on the Spanish ballot.
12 News spoke with Gorbea at one of her many campaign events this weekend.
“Rhode Islanders know that I have spent thirty years protecting the right to vote, expanding access to the ballot box.” Said Gorbea. “I was very disappointed by Mayor Elorza’s cheap political stunt on Friday before the primary, instead of showing up where he needed to at our public hearing at the board of elections.”
Gorbea said earlier this weekend that the B.O.E along with their vendor had remedied the issues related to the faulty ballots.
The board of elections had scheduled an emergency meeting on the issue for Monday, but called it off Sunday night after the vendor recommended against using the old voting machines.
The vendor, Election Systems & Software (ES&S) said that “ES&S does not see any reason why you should not use these machines” when referring to the new ExpressVote systems. They did explicitly recommend against using the older ones due to security flaws and an exponentially rising failure rate for those older systems.
This article was updated on Sunday night based on the decision by the Board of Elections.
