Voter fraud in South County by non-residents?

Charlestown, Block Island have lots more registered voters than residents over age 18

By Will Collette

Yesterday and Monday, we talked about House District 36 candidate  Blake Filippi voting and running from Block Island when he actually lives in Lincoln.

He's not the only one who apparently doesn't follow the law about voting where you really live.

The Providence Journal recently compared municipal voter lists to US Census Bureau data on the number of residents of those municipalities who were over the age of 18[1]. They found that in a number of communities, especially those along the coast[2], there were far more registered voters than people eligible to vote.

Out of Charlestown’s total population of 7,781, there are 6,278 who are over 18. However, when the ProJo did its report, they found 6,375 Charlestown registered voters, or 101.55% of the maximum possible number of those actually eligible. In recent data supplied to me by Town Clerk Amy Weinreich, the number of Charlestown registrations has actually increased to 6,401, which works out to 123 more voters than residents of voting age.

On Block Island, the numbers are far worse. According to the ProJo, Block Island has registered almost twice as many people (196.61%) as it has residents eligible to vote. Among those many people who are voting on Block Island but who live somewhere else is none other than Blake Filippi, candidate for House District 36. You may have recently received his mailing that starts out with his claim that he is “a lifelong resident of the District” when there are a couple dozen documents that establish his actual residence as Lincoln.

That’s probably just fine with the Charlestown Citizens Alliance (CCA Party) which has all but endorsed Filippi, despite his radical secessionist views—or perhaps because of it, given their stance on Charlestown exceptionalism and the Slattery doctrine of noninterference from agents of the state government[3].

The CCA Party and its parent, the RI Statewide Coalition, have long supported voting rights for non-residents. The CCA Party gets most of its funding from non-residents. At their last public meeting (August 26, 2008), the CCA Party endorsed former state Rep. Matt McHugh in his 2008 run against Donna Walsh largely because of McHugh’s pledge to fight for the vote for our oppressed wealthy coastal vacationers[4].

Providence Journal graphic - Charlestown was among the top
half dozen

After the 2012 election, one of my Progressive Charlestown colleagues did a spot-check of voters in the CCA Party strongholds along the coast and matched their addresses with those given to the Tax Assessor as the place where their tax bills should be sent.

That spot-check turned up more than a dozen 2012 voters in Charlestown’s election who listed different residence addresses with the Tax Assessor. They live in high-priced homes on Neptune Avenue, Spray Street, Oceanview Avenue, Sunset Drive, West Beach Road, Lucas Avenue, East Central Avenue, Central Street, and Boulder Avenue.

Their actual addresses are in Manhattan, Florida, Connecticut, Massachusetts, the New York suburbs, Virginia … and there was even one household full of Charlestown voters who actually live in Westerly.

If there is a similar pattern of voting fraud in Charlestown in 2014, we will call for a more complete audit to find those who voted without actually living here and for the results of the audit to be sent to the State Police. 

Under the RI General Laws 17-9.1-12, it is a felony to make a false statement – such as a bogus address – when registering to vote. Under RIGL 17-23-17, it is a felony to vote when you are not qualified to vote (i.e., because you don’t live in the jurisdiction) or aid and abet someone to vote illegally. Take note, CCA Party.

I asked Town Clerk Amy Weinreich, who also heads the town Board of Canvassers, for her views on why Charlestown has so many registered voters over and above the maximum eligible based on Census figures. This is her reply:

Regarding "the ProJo article that put Charlestown registration at higher than the Census bureau numbers of persons eligible to vote", please note, from the document previously provided to you, that Charlestown voter registration totals currently include 480 Inactive voters. The confirmation process, outlined in RIGL §17-9.1-28, has been initiated for these voters.

How Charlestown voter registrations are split among the parties

While that’s a fine – if overdue – idea, even if all 480 “inactive” voters are purged from the list, that takes us down to 5,921 voters or 94.3% of those eligible. 

That is still an extraordinarily high voter registration rate especially when you consider Charlestown’s low voter turn-out and generally low level of civic engagement.

Though there are a number of innocent reasons for the unusual numbers – deaths, changes in address being high among them – there have been coordinated federal and state efforts to get those voter listings off the rolls. Plus, these are issues that affect every municipality, which still leaves open the question of why Charlestown has one of the worst records in the state.

If I were to take a wild guess, I’d say that we have a lot of people with a property interest in Charlestown who feel highly motivated to vote here, whether or not they actually live here. We also have town government controlled by the CCA Party which has no self-interest in cleaning up the voter list.

Fix the problem: Cross-check the lists

One way Amy could tackle the job of cleaning up Charlestown’s voter list is to do what we did on a spot-check basis: cross-reference the voter list with the home address property owners have given to the Tax Assessor. Amy and Ken hang out a lot and Ken is Town Hall’s resident computer geek – running the lists against each other should not be too difficult.

While the results may not be legally definitive, it certainly would give the Board of Canvassers a prime target list for people who may no longer be eligible to vote in Charlestown.

Here is the data Amy referred to above, showing how Charlestown’s current voter list breaks down in terms of status and party affiliation:

Where does Blake Filippi REALLY live?

This is Blake Filippi's actual residence at 1092 Great Road in Lincoln

As sketchy as Charlestown’s numbers are, Block Island is even worse. At 196% of eligible voters registered, it has Rhode Island’s worst record for keeping its voter rolls honest.

Blake Filippi, candidate for House District 36, is one of those many BI voters who, by the evidence, appear to live elsewhere. Filippi registered to vote on Block Island in 2000 and, according to Westlaw database records, has voted on BI since at least 2006.

Last July, Filippi filed a sworn statement declaring his candidacy for House District 36, giving 912 Champlin Road on Block Island as his home. However, according to the Block Island Tax Assessor’s database, there is no 912 Champlin Road. Instead, there is a 912 Coast Guard Road, a property owned by Filippi’s mother. It may be the same property, but that begs the question – why did attorney Filippi fail to use the actual legal address[5].

But that’s a minor technicality compared to the much bigger problem.

In May and June, Filippi made major campaign donations to Fung for Governor and Dawson Hodgson for Attorney General. He listed his family’s cattle farm at 1092 Great Road, Lincoln, RI[6], as his residence[7].

He made ten other major campaign donations after registering to vote as a BI resident where he listed Lincoln as his home address.

In the three years after he registered to vote as a Block Island resident, Filippi was pulled over by police in Rhode Island and Arizona for moving violations and gave the arresting officers identification listing Lincoln as his home address.

Filippi took out his lawyer’s license in Rhode Island listing Lincoln as his home address. He took out his Massachusetts lawyer’s license also using the Lincoln address.

And those campaign flyers and mailers he’s been passing around? The phone number listed for you to call if you have questions for him – is his Lincoln phone number.

Here are the Filippi brothers (front row in shorts) at a Block Island public hearing on liquor law violations at Ballard's, which the family owns. Note the one-finger salute.

If Filippi is any good as a lawyer, you would think he would understand that you can’t do this. You can’t claim to live in one place for voting purposes yet live in another place for other official matters – and not at the same time.

As Rep. Walsh’s recent campaign mailer asks, “how can you trust a guy who lies about where he lives?” She has filed a formal complaint against Filippi with the Board of Elections that points out these documents that contradict the claims he made when he registered to vote, voted and declared as a candidate. Click on this document to see all those documents for yourself.

UPDATE: So far, Filippi has tried to divert attention away from the documents presented in Rep. Walsh's complaint by whining about the timing of the complaint and saying that the records were "cherry-picked." Unless you're allergic to cherries, that is simply a classic lawyer's "non-denial denial."

Filippi’s problem is that he will need to explain to voters whether he lied on his voter and candidate paperwork or on all his other paperwork. He can call those records cherries or potatoes. The real question is are they true. He can’t have it both ways.

Neither can the CCA Party’s non-resident supporters. They have already “earned” their right to call the shots by providing the CCA Party with the majority of its funding. In turn, the CCA Party bends over backwards to give our non-residents what they want.

FOOTNOTES

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[1] Not everyone over 18 who was counted in the Census is actually eligible to vote. While the Census counts immigrants, regardless of status, those immigrants may not vote until they have become citizens. 

[2] In addition to Charlestown and Block Island, Jamestown has a problem with its 118.46% registration rate, Little Compton at 108.%, North Kingstown at 112.53% and Richmond at 106.52%.

[3] Filippi is the head of a group called the Rhode Island Liberty Coalition, a radical libertarian group aligned with the Tenth Amendment Center, the Oathkeepers and an array of other extremist groups who urge resistance – active and passive – to laws they feel (sans any validation from the Supreme Court) are either not constitutional or not to their liking. They overlap extensively with the most militant of the gun groups. Filippi has attempted to purge the internet of his website, but vestiges of it still survive on archival search tools and even on Google. Click here for an example. If you click on Filippi's site now, all you get is an article called "The Best Man's Speech" on how to write a wedding toast. 

[4] The CCA Party has purged the link to that meeting from their website, along with lots of other embarrassing stuff. We reported on it here and here and here. There’s something more than a little Orwellian in the way the CCA Party, Filippi and others with embarrassments in their histories try to wipe out that history from the Web. While they can make the material harder to find, they keep forgetting that the internet has a long memory.

[5] Ironically, Harry Staley, founder of RISC and godfather to the CCA Party did something very similar. He listed 99 Donizetti Road in Westerly as his home address when the legal address listed on the Westerly Tax Assessor’s database is 99 Gounod Road. Same house but two entrances.

[6] That’s actually in House District #46 which is represented by Jeremiah O’Grady, not House District 36 where Filippi claims to be a “lifelong resident” and now candidate.

[7] RIGL 17-1-3 requires you to have lived at an address for not less than 30 days prior to registering. Filippi made his donation to Fung on June 21, 2014 listing Lincoln as his residence, He filed his local declaration of candidacy as a Block Island resident two or three days later. On June 26, 2014, just five days later, he filed his Notice of Organization with the Board of Elections listing 912 Champlin on Block Island as his address.