Matos has 94% of nominating signatures tossed in Jamestown. How did other campaigns compare?

Collecting signatures for candidate nomination papers can be sloppy business, but one campaign worker for Lt. Gov. Sabina Matos, who is running for the Democratic nomination in the 1st Congressional District, made a particular mess leading to a criminal investigation.

While a Providence Journal review of papers filed in Jamestown, where the Matos campaign's errors first came to light, showed that other campaigns had signatures rejected, the Matos signatures were rejected at a rate of more than four times other candidates.

The Journal reviewed papers for five of the major candidates in the race: Gabe Amo, Sandra Cano, Donald Carlson, Aaron Regunberg and Matos. The papers for the first four were supplied by Secretary of State Gregg M. Amore, while the Matos papers were supplied by Jamestown Town Clerk Roberta J. Fagan.

Jamestown's town clerk kept some information secret

Fagan redacted the number portion of the address listed for each person who signed the Matos papers and the signature they gave, even when it was decided the signature was bogus.

To justify withholding the blacked-out information, Fagan cited a section of the state's Access to Public Records Act that protects "individually identifiable records …, the disclosure of which would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy."

Voter addresses, including the house number, are considered public record and digitized lists of them are routinely given to anyone who asks, especially political organizations looking to build mailing lists.

Fagan also cited a 2018 attorney general's opinion that the secretary of state's office did not have to give the Providence Journal a computer database that included the full date of birth of each voter.

None of what Fagan blacked out were dates of birth.

Although it doesn't make public a database with the full date of birth included, the secretary of state's office will provided anyone who asks for it with a database of every voter in Rhode Island, with their name, address, party affiliation and other information, including the year of birth, but not the month and day. It also will provide the full date of birth for individual voters, but not in a database.

State law has a provision to allow victims of domestic violence to register to vote without their information becoming public.

Matos' signatures were rejected at a much higher rate than other major candidates

The Matos campaign had 94.1% of it's potential lines of signatures rejected in Jamestown. That's all but one of the 17 the campaign submitted.

The Cano campaign had 13.0% of its 92 potential lines rejected in the island community. That included one line that was left blank.

More from Jamestown: A Jamestown elections clerk started three weeks ago. Then, he found signatures from dead voters.

The Carlson campaign had 18.2% of its 143 potential lines rejected, including four blanks.

The Amo campaign had no signatures rejected, but it only submitted two.

The Regunberg campaign did not submit nomination papers in Jamestown, according to the secretary of state's office.

3 signatures suspected to be from dead people

The Jamestown Board of Canvassers placed an asterisk next to the names of three people who signed the Matos nominating papers without explaining on the papers what the mark means. The Journal has matched those names to people who have appeared in published obituaries as having died: Gladys (Gannon) Geib, who died in 2012; her husband, Frederick J. Geib, who died before her; and Charles Everett Cabral, who died in 2017.

In a July 13 letter to Jamestown Police Detective Derek Carlino, Keith Ford, the clerk for the canvassing board, drew the detective's attention to three names, saying those three had passed away.

Fagan blacked out the three names in the copy of the letter provided to The Journal.

Other reasons signatures were rejected

Of the 16 lines that were rejected on the Matos papers, six were rejected because the signatures did not match what was on file in voter registration records; seven were rejected because the person could not be found in voter registration records; and three were ruled ineligible, though the form does not have space to explain why.

Of the 92 lines submitted by the Cano campaign, 80 were approved; nine were rejected because the signatures didn't match; and one each were rejected for being in eligible, a duplicate or a blank.

Of the 143 lines submitted by the Carlson campaign, 117 were approved; 12 were rejected because the signatures didn't match; five were rejected because the voter lived in the wrong district; four were rejected because the person could not be found in voter registration records; one was ruled ineligible and four were blank.

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Sabina Matos had 94% of signatures tossed in Jamestown as fake