Two weeks into his new job as Jamestown’s canvassing board clerk, Keith Ford spotted and flagged forged signatures on Sabina Matos’ candidate nomination papers in the 2023 1st Congressional District special election.
Ford’s eagle eyes set off a yearslong investigation into Matos’ campaign that led to criminal convictions for two campaign workers, though Matos was never charged or found to have played a role. It also highlighted the lack of consistency in how local election administrators review and verify signatures for candidates to qualify for the ballot.
“Just the way you look at each signature, and consider how it’s slanting or where the pen lifted up off the paper, it’s all very nuanced,” Ford said.
Bringing uniformity to the way the state’s 39 municipal canvassing boards and their staff perform their duties, including signature verification, is the goal behind a new professional development program organized by state elections agencies. The Election Training and Certification Program, a joint venture between the Board of Elections and Department of State, celebrated its inaugural graduating class, including Ford, in a ceremony Thursday.
“We wanted to make elections more uniform across the state, and raise the standards of administering elections for local officials,” Miguel Nunez, elections board director, said in an interview. “We also wanted to give them the tools they need to succeed.”
Rather than “Pomp and Circumstance,” applause filled the silence as the 67 graduates strode toward the dais in the Board of Elections meeting room to accept their certificates and shake hands with state election leaders. But the transformed Cranston office space still featured balloons, flag-laden centerpieces and commendations for the canvassing board members and election staffers who have devoted the last 18 months to honing their skills.
“The headlines come out of Washington D.C.,” Secretary of State Gregg Amore told program graduates Thursday. “The headlines come out of the State House. But the reality is, the people in this room are the backbone of our democracy.”
From one three-hour seminar to 13 classes spanning 34 hours
Up until the 13-class, 34-hour professional development program began in January 2025, election workers were offered a chance to brush up on the rules via a single three-hour virtual seminar in the runup to statewide and presidential primaries. That seemed increasingly insufficient in the eyes of John Marion, executive director of Common Cause Rhode Island.
“The way elections are run in Rhode Island, the rubber meets the road in the 39 municipalities,” Marion said in a separate interview. “The more professionalized that can be, the better it’s going to be for voters.”
New technology comes with cybersecurity concerns, while recent state laws increasing access to mail ballots and early, in-person voting added complexity and deadline pressure.
The signature fraud that clouded the 2023 Democratic congressional primary was the final push for a modernized and thorough training program, drawing upon models in other states like Colorado and Oregon.
“Because we have 39 municipalities, even though we all do the same process, everyone practices it a little bit differently,” said Kathy Placencia, elections director for the Department of State. Placencia led the training program in conjunction with Johanna Petrarca, elections board deputy director.
The curriculum was offered free to participants with the $6,000 administration cost split between the elections board and Department of State, Nunez said. Another 70 people attended at least some of the classes, and will be able to earn a certificate as the program continues, with individual classes offered on an ad-hoc basis to those interested.
Program organizers noted the attendance record was especially strong given that the in-person, weekly trainings were an addition to full-time jobs running elections, and, in the case of some clerks, other municipal operations like licensing and vital records.
Marcy Alves, registrar for the town of Coventry, oversaw an August 2025 special election for two Town Council seats during the program. Alves saw the training as a direct benefit to her election administration duties, especially because she had just started as town registrar earlier that year.
“This program really helped me to put together what I was doing for the election in real time,” Alves said.
At the center of the curriculum are the rules and regulations governing state elections: the process for setting up polling places, collecting mail ballots, verifying signatures, and maintaining up-to-date voter lists. But the program also encompassed tangential topics that state elections officials thought might be beneficial. The Attorney General’s office offered an overview of the Open Meetings Act, while the Rhode Island Ethics Commission gave a presentation on state ethics code for public officials.
There were also courses dedicated to cybersecurity and physical security, including an active shooter drill. While Rhode Island elections administrators have not faced the severity or prevalence of threats and physical harm plaguing their counterparts in other parts of the country, they too have been put in the center of tense moments.
“We’ve definitely had our share of uncomfortable situations,” said Hugh Moren, Newport elections administrator. “Candidates behaving poorly, drunk people showing up to the polls — you have to know how to handle it.”
Moren, like other seasoned election administrators who took the course, characterized it as a “refresher” rather than a new set of rules. But, he too acknowledged the need to bring consistency to election operations.
“The thing that was most surprising was how many different practices there are,” he said.
Some municipalities, like Newport, for example, have local police collect ballots on election night. Others leave the task to poll workers, or do it themselves.
The variation isn’t necessarily a bad thing. But uniformity improves efficiency and can increase public confidence in elections at a time when trust in election security is waning, Marion said.
“Every election, there are always problems,” he said, noting that mishaps are often less attention-drawing than the signature scandal that plagued the 1st Congressional District primary in 2023. “This is a good way to be proactive, to not wait for a problem to happen.”
The two-hour ceremony Thursday also offered a rare opportunity to celebrate and spotlight election workers, whose efforts are often overlooked, said Rob Rock, deputy elections administrator.
The respite from the daily grind would be short-lived, though.
Monday starts a three-day declaration period for state and local candidates to file papers with local election workers, setting off a series of fast-approaching deadlines until the Sept. 9 primary.
“We’re always juggling,” said Sandra Giovanelli, Cumberland town clerk. “Anyone will tell you I came to every class, even this graduate, late.”
