TROUBLED ELECTIONS Problems scrutinized in state Senate race BY STEVEN STYCOS

Three months after the November 2004 election, Green Party state Senate candidate Jeff Toste continues to protest how it was handled in Providence’s West End. Toste has filed a complaint with the state Board of Elections charging that Providence poll workers and police unevenly enforced the ban on campaigning within 50 feet of a polling place, failed to follow campaign law inside the polls, and tore down Toste signs in one instance.

Although Toste garnered 29 percent of the vote and acknowledges incumbent Democratic Senator Frank Caprio won the election, he insists that polling place procedures should be improved to avoid a repeat of the irregularities he experienced. "How can we trust the results as accurate," Toste asks, "when we had such a problem with people being misinformed and misinforming voters, and literally inhibiting our campaign from having an opportunity to reach voters?"

"We take his complaint seriously," says Roger Begin, chair of the Board of Elections. A former state representative and lieutenant governor, Begin says he has never seen "as egregious and deliberate behavior of uneven application of the rules," as appears to have occurred in Toste’s race. He says the board will ask Laurence Flynn, executive secretary and chairman of the Providence Board of Canvassers to respond to Toste’s complaints.

Flynn says he received a letter from Toste, plans to investigate, and will try to correct any problems.

Among Toste’s complaints is the haphazard enforcement of the state law that bars campaigning within 50 feet of the polls. In Cranston and some other Rhode Island communities, chalk lines are drawn around polling place entrances to keep candidates and their supporters outside a 50-foot radius, but Providence does not. Robert Sumner-Mack of Pawtucket, a Toste supporter, says police told him to move away from the entrance stairs to Olney Towers, but that when he returned to the site several weeks later with a tape measure, he found the spot to be 58 feet from the building.

Campaign workers for several campaigns were also moved across the street from the Mount Pleasant fire station when police determined they were within 50 feet of it. But at the Dominica Manor polling place, Caprio was filmed greeting voters within 50 feet of an entrance to the building. Caprio concedes that he campaigned inside the 50 feet margin, but adds that he and other candidates have always campaigned at that spot without incident.

Toste complains that police and poll workers improperly enforced other election laws. At the Parenti Villa polling place, Toste campaign worker Jonna Iacono saw a woman accompany disabled voters into the voting booth and instruct them how to vote without completing the required affidavit, according to a statement submitted to the Board of Elections.

Another Toste campaign worker, Benjamin Gworek of Providence, says police tore Toste signs off telephone poles at the Mount Pleasant fire station, while leaving other candidates’ signs on the poles untouched.

Police also confiscated a student filmmaker’s video camera at the fire station, says University of Rhode Island adjunct faculty member David Bettencourt, alleging that filming violated anti-terrorism laws. The police returned the camera 20 minutes later, Bettencourt says.

To correct these and other irregularities, Toste recommends that poll workers be better trained and tested for competency. Police also need better training, he says, and the 50-foot boundary should be clearly marked at all polling places. Caprio says poll worker training is adequate and that full-time workers handle Election Day problems well.

While Begin and Flynn investigate, Bettencourt plans to show his related short film, District 5, on Sunday, February 20 at 11 a.m. at the Church of the Mediator, 50 Rounds Ave., Providence.