Legislation

This legislation would have required all prisoners to be counted, for redistricting purposes only, at their last known address, rather than at the prison that they are incarcerated in.

This legislation allows Boards of Canvassers to combine voting districts for many elections, and ultimately passed without amendments which we proposed to ensure proper notification to voters and limits on the voters who can be sent to a polling location.

Regardless of who a vote is for, all voters fundamentally deserve the right for their votes to be counted. For this reason, we opposed a bill which would have eliminated the counting of write-in votes for persons who had not filed in advance a “declaration of intent.”

The ACLU once again supported legislation to require all prisoners to be counted, for voting purposes only, at their last known address.

The ACLU testified on a variety of election-related bills, some of which we supported and some of which we did not.

We have long opposed legislative efforts to impose added qualifications for candidates to appear on the ballot in RI. For that reason, we opposed this legislation which would have required presidential candidates to publicly disclose their federal tax returns in order to be listed on the ballot.

Voters should have the right to have their votes tallied, even if it is for a losing cause. Legislation introduced this year would have imposed restrictions on that right, by eliminating the counting of write-in votes for persons who have not filed in advance a "declaration of intent."

The ACLU of RI has long objected to legislative efforts to impose additional qualifications on candidates to qualify for the ballot. Just as the legislature should refrain from setting unnecessary barriers in the way for people to vote, it should not add unnecessary obstacles to get on the ballot.