Board of Canvassers Details

Description:
The primary goal of the Board of Canvassers is to operate in accordance with title 17 of the Rhode Island General Laws and the Charter of the City of Warwick. An additional goal of the department is to commence implementation of the Central Voter Registration Program (CVR) as directed by the new Help America Vote Act (HAVA). This is federal legislation enacted for states to convert to a uniform state-wide system.

Activities:
1. Continue with requried upgrades and conversions of the IMAS voter registration system to meeet the anticipated CVR and HAVA initiatives.
2. Address election requirements due to March, 2004 Presidential preference primary election, including but not limited to:

• Delcaration nominations
• Verification, gathering, and compilation of reporting information.
• Legal ads and posting of warrants
• Preparation of mail ballot applications and mail batllots
• Scheduling and training of poll wokers for 53 districts
• Preparing street listings, voter lists and labels for 53 districts
• Purchasing and organizing supplies for 53 districts
• Preparing lists for candidates

3. Voter list maintenance - (All activities included in voter list maintenance require the handling of approximately 60,000 voter registration cards for each project.

• Continued voter list maintenance, which not only includes a tremendous amount of data entry but also the filing and refilling of hard copies as each new entry or change is made.
• Postal duplicate list changes
• National Change of Address

Committee, Boards, Commissions:
The Board of Canvassers is governed by a board of three and is responsible for the conduct of all election activities as outlined above.

• Chairman - Edward Murphy
• Vice Chair - Susan Abramson
• Secretary - Lauren Slocum

Warwick City Charter Legislation:
8-16. Board of canvassers.

The canvassing authority of the city shall be a board of canvassers and registration. The city council shall elect a bipartisan canvassing authority of three qualified electors of the city not more than two of whom shall belong to the same political party. The mayor shall nominate the members of said canvassing authority from lists submitted by the respective chairmen of the city political committee which list shall contain the names of five times the number of persons to be elected. If the city council shall refuse to approve the nomination of any person to said canvassing authority, the mayor shall submit to the city council another person named on one of said lists and so on until a person shall be appointed; provided, however, if the chairman of the city committee of a political party entitled to an appointment shall fail or refuse to submit a list as aforesaid, the mayor shall nominate any person known by him to be a member of the political party entitled to said appointment. The members first appointed shall serve for terms of one, two, and three years respectively, and until their successors are qualified and thereafter one member shall be appointed each year for a term of three years.

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