Expanding Rhode Island’s permanent absentee option to all residents and making the list truly permanent would save the state money on application postage as well as administrative costs for processing multiple requests for a single voter.

Creating an online portal for voters to request an absentee ballot that feeds directly into the voter registration system is an important step to help verify addresses, collect contact information, and to remove administrative steps to process a large amount of requests. It can also serve as an up to date source of information for voters. We encourage an integrated process that allows new voters to register, current voters to make changes to their address and make requests for ballots in a seamless manner.

Rhode Island already has drop boxes and allows drop off at election offices; adding polling place drop off and vote centers would further lessen the reliance on the postal service and increase voter convenience and confidence.

Rhode Island should eliminate its witness and notary requirement, as it both raises barriers and is less secure than signature matching.

Expanding accepting of ballots with Election Day postmarks received shortly after election day is a best practice to ensure that voters are given all options to vote their ballot in a timely manner, and one that Rhode Island already follows: Rhode Island already offers postmark acceptance for military and overseas voters. Accepting Election Day postmarks is estimated in most jurisdictions to decrease ballot rejection rates by half. In most jurisdictions, accepte postmarked ballots decreases ballot rejection rates by half.

Ballot tracking software such as Ballot Scout or BallotTrax can be a very cost effective tool to improve Rhode Island’s current ballot tracking and increase voter confidence by allowing voters and the election offices to track ballots and serving as another modality to contact voters if there is a signature mismatch or deficiency on their return envelope. An expanded notification system helps keep rejection rates low and increases voter confidence.

Same day voter registration would improve upon Rhode Island’s automatic voter registration to ensure that any eligible resident who wasn’t automatically registered and wants to cast a ballot in an election can.