From Voter ID to residency minimum: These bills could change elections in RI. Here's how.
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PROVIDENCE – Should Rhode Island repeal its Voter ID law? Join the majority of states with a minimum-residency requirement for their candidates for governor? Limit who can put a mail ballot in the mail?
There are arguments on all sides, including this from the American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island on the proposed five-year residency requirement: "Knowing 'where the Benny’s used to be' should only go so far in serving as a formal qualification for running for governor."
The debate began in the Senate on Tuesday night and spills over to the House on Wednesday, with Rhode Island's new secretary of state, Gregg Amore, seeking to head off some of the proposals up for hearing.
More on residency requirements:You can run for governor of RI after living here for a month. We asked officials: Should you?
Limit who can mail in a mail ballot for a voter: Senate Bill 0395
Among the targets of Amore's criticism: a Republican-led effort to limit the people who can "physically mail [a] voted mail ballot" to the "voter/spouse/court appointed guardian/cohabitant/or adult person related to the voter by blood or marriage."
Amore warns the move could – and likely would – disenfranchise voters who live by themselves and older voters who rely on others for assistance by prohibiting people in "a voter’s trusted circle from being able to assistthem when returning their mail ballot."
"It should be up to voters to determine whom they trust to deliver their mail ballot," he wrote his former colleagues in the legislature. Beyond that, "It would be impossible for election officials to identify who left amail ballot in the drop box."
The RI Developmental Disabilities Council also weighed in against the bill, predicting it "would inadvertently disenfranchise many people with intellectual and developmental disabilities by ... [prohibiting] personal-care attendants, neighbors or friends from dropping off a ballot into a ballot box for a person with disabilities."
Writing for the council, Robert Marshall gave this example: "A staff person at a group home taking the ballots (completed independently and in private by the four residents of the home, all of whom are in wheelchairs) to the drop box at Town Hall would be prohibited.
"The staff person would have to drive all four residents to Town Hall and have each of them get out of the van and put the ballot in the drop box."
The lead sponsors are Republican Senators Elaine Morgan, Jessica de la Cruz, Thomas Paolino, Anthony DeLuca and Democrat Leonidas Raptakis.
Repeal the Voter ID law: Senate Bill 0364
Among those leading the perennial effort to repeal Voter ID: the Rhode Island Commission for Human Rights, which says repeal "would encourage voting by ethnic minorities, the elderly, people with disabilities and those who are poor."
"Voter identification was enacted for a reasonable purpose – to deter voter fraud," the commission acknowledged. "However, voter identification comes at a high price – the discouragement of voting ... [and that] price is too high to pay."
Having stated the argument for keeping Voter ID, which has been in place for more than a decade, the commission made this argument for repeal in its written testimony:
"Poor people with multiple jobs (many of whom are ethnic minorities), as well as people who are elderly and/or who have disabilities, may give up their right to vote when faced with the practical difficulties of obtaining the correct identification."
"Even the provision in the current law for a provisional ballot will not solve the problem, as people may bediscouraged from voting when they learn, ahead of time or at the polling location, that they needspecific identification."
The sponsors: Senate Democrats Tiara Mack, Samuel Zurier, Jonathon Acosta, Bridget Valverde, Pam Lauria, Valarie Lawson and Alana DiMario.
How we vote in RI:One measure of whether things are returning to normal? How Rhode Islanders voted
Five-year residency requirement to run for governor: Senate Bill 0343
The ACLU is battling a proposed five-year minimum residency requirement for candidates for governor, which became a real-life issue last year when Republican Ashley Kalus moved to Rhode Island, registered to vote in January and announced for governor in March.
She could not have done so in Florida, the last state where she was registered to vote, because Florida requires its candidates for governor to be residents and registered voters there for at least seven years. She could not have done so in California, where she was born, or Massachusetts, where she grew up, because they too have multi-year minimum residency requirements for their governors. In fact, most states do.
Kalus lost to incumbent Gov. Dan McKee by 19 percentage points, but her self-financed candidacy drew attention to a quirk in Rhode Island: candidates need only prove they've been in the state for 30 days.
"We acknowledge that Rhode Island is one of only a handful of states that has a de minimis residency requirement, and we appreciate the arguments that are offered for imposing a more substantial residency obligation on candidates," the ALCU wrote lawmakers.
"Ultimately, however, we believe it should be up to the voters themselves to size up the candidates in any particular election and determine their qualifications as a whole – including whether a lack of a lengthy consecutive presence in the state is reason not to vote for them."
"Under this proposal, for example, a person who had lived here for decades and moved out of state for a year or two for work-related reasons would be disqualified from running for governor until they had returned to the state for five years."
"A person who has held office or actively participated in government in another state may have a better capability and appreciation of how to serve constituents than a native Rhode Islander who has no political experience whatsoever," the ACLU argued.
This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: RI Voter ID repeal, mail ballot limits: Proposed changes to RI election law
