Breakdown: Here’s how many signatures were collected, rejected in Rhode Island CD-1 race

For what seems like months now, Rhode Islanders and those interested in the Special Election for Rhode Island’s 1st Congressional District have been talking about signatures on nomination papers.

Specifically, the signatures on nomination papers submitted by Lieutenant Governor Sabina Matos’s campaign in the Rhode Island 1st Congressional District race. The signatures on the nomination papers allegedly included the names of dead people and some from people who have reportedly said their names were forged. Rhode Island’s Attorney General is now investigating those signatures.

Nomination papers are the forms on which candidates obtain valid signatures of registered voters who are eligible to vote for the office they seek. To be on the ballot for Rhode Island’s 1st Congressional District, candidates had to obtain 500 valid signatures on their nomination papers. Any registered voter who is eligible to vote in Rhode Island’s 1st Congressional District would be considered a valid signature.

Following an August 15 meeting of the Rhode Island Board of Elections, which said that its review of nomination signatures submitted by the congressional campaign of Lt. Gov. Sabina Matos found “no obvious pattern of fraud,” focus from some then shifted to the percentage of signatures submitted by her campaign that were rejected.

43.09% of the 1,281 signatures that were submitted by the Matos campaign were rejected by the local board of canvassers across Congressional District 1.

What does that number even mean if we don’t know why they were rejected and have nothing to compare it to?

What’sUpNewp reached out to the Rhode Island Department of State last week with a request for data to help put the 43.09% of rejected signatures into context, share why they were denied, and compare all candidate’s signature data.

Total Accepted Signatures

What’sUpNewp broke down the data for only the candidates that will appear on the September 5 primary ballot for Rhode Island’s 1st Congressional District – Marvin Abney did not qualify for the ballot and Nicholas Autiello withdrew from the race (recently backing Sabina Matos).

In total, 9,779 signatures were submitted by the fourteen candidates (twelve Democrats, and two Republicans) who will appear on the ballot. 2,665 (27.25%) of all signatures submitted were rejected by local board of canvassers for some reason – the most common reason being “voter not found”.

Sabina Matos turned in the highest number of signatures (1,281), but also had the highest percentage of signatures rejected (43.09%).

Democrat Sandra Cano and Republican candidates Gerry W. Leonard, Jr. and Terri Flynn had the lowest amount of signatures rejected.

Thanks to Twitter user Michael Costa for putting this into a graph on Twitter.

As a chart https://t.co/jFcIAlT8Ra pic.twitter.com/bpMQApwjPa

— Michael Costa ⚓️ (@Costa24601) August 22, 2023

Reason For Rejection

According to data provided to What’sUpNewp by Gregory M. McBurney, Deputy Director of Elections at the Rhode Island Department of State, reasons for signature rejection include duplicate, blank line, not eligible, a signature mismatch, voter not found, and wrong congressional district.

50.65% of all rejected signatures were done so due to “voter not found”. A common reason a voter is not found is because they are not registered/their name is not found in the database. The “wrong district” would mean that the voter who signed the nomination lives in Rhode Island’s 2nd Congressional District, not the 1st Congressional District.