Fake signature probe widens as another city sends Matos nominating papers to police

PROVIDENCE – A third Rhode Island community has asked police to investigate invalid signatures on nominating papers submitted by Lt. Gov. Sabina Matos' campaign for Congress and, more specifically, the blatantly falsified signatures of several members of the East Providence City Council and a School Committee member.

Among the tip-offs: same pen, same handwriting, and two of the city councilmen who allegedly signed the sheet listed the Taunton Avenue address of East Providence City Hall as their home address. Another who purportedly signed the sheet gave his address as "Ward 1 East Prov."

Why were the signatures flagged?

On Wednesday, the East Providence Canvassing Board filed a fraud report with city police, based on a review of the 28 signatures submitted by a campaign worker who identified herself as Shanna Gallagher, according to board member Christopher Dias.

(Gallagher is not registered to vote at the Waterman Avenue address that she listed as her own home address.)

All 28 of the alleged voter signatures on the form submitted by Gallagher were rejected by the East Providence canvassing board. By the time the board contacted local police, two other communities had already publicly done so.

More: Matos signatures in Newport will also be referred to police. What we know

Dias said he had talked to all six city officials whose signatures were falsified and they verified to him that they had not signed the nomination paper in question, including council members Robert Rodericks, Frank Rego, Anna Sousa, Frank Fogarty and Rick Lawson, and School Committee member Ryan Queenan.

At this point in the widening scandal, at least three cities in Rhode Island's 1st Congressional District have asked police to investigate signatures submitted to them by the Matos campaign: Jamestown, Newport and East Providence.

Asked if there are others, Brian Hodge, a spokesman for Attorney General Peter Neronha, said: "The Office of the Attorney General, together with several law enforcement partners, is investigating signatures received from multiple cities and towns in Congressional District 1.

"As this is an ongoing investigation; we decline further comment at this time."

Dead voters' signatures tipped off Jamestown clerk

The first community to find discrepancies was Jamestown, where canvassing board clerk Keith Ford identified numerous signatures "that flew up red flags for me," including purported signatures from more than one dead voter.

Other signatures purported to be from people who were not registered to vote or eligible to vote. All but one of the 17 signatures on the sheet were rejected.

On the job only three weeks, Ford said, he "thought it was suspicious," so he called the state Board of Elections and secretary of state to ask what he should do, and the people with whom he spoke in both offices advised him to contact the police.

"Trial by fire," said Ford, a former police dispatcher.

In the Jamestown case, the nominating paper in question was submitted by $15-an-hour Matos campaign worker Holly McClaren.

McClaren was featured in one of Gov. Dan McKee's most memorable reelection campaign ads last year – one that attacked Republican Ashley Kalus for not being "from around here."

McClaren also worked as a field organizer on the ballot referendum last year that authorized Providence to borrow $515 million to help pay pension debts. She was paid $6,300 by the campaign, called the Committee to Save Providence, according to its filings with the state Board of Elections.)

McClaren, also known as Holly Cekala, was featured in a September 2012 Journal story on addiction headlined "Road to recovery is long and bumpy."

Cekala told The Journal she started using drugs as a teenager, and by the time she was 30, she was addicted to alcohol and cocaine and working as a restaurant manager: "One night, on her way home from drinking at Foxwoods Casino, she crashed her car. She broke her neck and back in six places. She was in a coma for nearly three months. When she came to, she had to learn to walk again."

In 2015, her alma mater Rhode Island College hailed graduate Cekala as "one of the state’s leading advocates in the field of addiction recovery and executive director of RICARES," the story says.

McClaren no longer works for the Matos campaign, according to a campaign spokesman who said she'd worked on other campaigns and is a well-respected field worker with a good reputation.

More: Matos allegedly submits fraudulent signatures, Jamestown officials investigating

Will Matos still qualify for the ballot?

On Friday, the state Board of Elections has scheduled a hearing on the objections to Matos' nominating papers filed by the Rhode Island Working Families Party and Donald Carlson, one of the 11 other candidates in the off-year Democratic primary contest to replace David Cicilline in the U.S. House of Representatives.

It is unclear what the state elections board might do, but a ruling in a 2002 case involving then-state Rep. Aisha Abdullah-Obiase that went all the way to the state Supreme Court effectively limited the board to rejecting questionable signatures and not every voter signature on a candidate's nominating papers.

As the scandal widened, Matos campaign manager Brexton Isaacs issued a statement that said, in part, “Our campaign was deeply disappointed and angry to learn of reports that inaccurate signatures were submitted to the campaign."

"Our campaign provided clear instructions to circulators on how to correctly gather signatures," the statement said. "Anyone who violated these detailed instructions and the nomination process has no place in our campaign and will be held accountable. Any insinuation that our campaign in any way encouraged this is simply false and contradictory to the facts."

Based on the campaign's own review, Isaacs said, "We are confident that, once the board has reviewed the facts, they will uphold the secretary of state’s determination that we have qualified for the ballot."

How were the signatures collected?

Elaborating on how the signature gathering worked, Matos spokesman Evan England – who notarized the signature sheets in question – said, "Field workers are paid a flat rate of $15 per hour and are not compensated based on the number of signatures collected."

"Ms. McClaren was hired to provide part-time fieldwork, including voter outreach and canvassing," he said. "She is no longer involved with the campaign. (He has not yet responded to questions about Gallagher.)

But he, too, said, "All signature gatherers were provided with an instruction sheet that outlined the procedure to properly collect signatures when they received sheets."

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Sabina Matos fake signatures included East Providence city councilors