WEST WARWICK — The state Board of Elections will meet tomorrow morning to decide whether Republican John J. Clarke Jr. is a legitimate candidate for the District 9 Senate seat held by Democrat Stephen D. Alves.

Clarke was appointed to run by state GOP Chairman Giovanni Cicione after no Republicans declared for Alves’ seat by last Wednesday’s deadline. State law gives state party chairmen 24 hours after the deadline to do so; they may not nominate someone for a seat for which one of their own party has already declared.

The issue concerning Clarke — and four other General Assembly candidates that Cicione appointed last week — is that Cicione reported his appointments to the secretary of state rather than to the local canvassers, the proper procedure.

The West Warwick Board of Canvassers had been prepared to take up Clarke’s candidacy at a meeting yesterday afternoon, but it agreed to defer to the elections board, whose executive director, Robert Kando, advised in a letter that it would consider that candidacy and four others questioned for the same reason when it meets at 10 tomorrow morning.

“Right now, theoretically, with the exception of this letter, there’s no intent on this man’s part to run for the seat,” Town Solicitor Timothy A. Williamson — who also is a state representative and, like Alves, a West Warwick Democrat — said yesterday.

“Suppose he was in Hawaii: there is no power of attorney, nothing to indicate to the Town of West Warwick that he has any interest in running for this because if he did, he would have filed his declaration to the Board of Canvassers,” Williamson said.

Alves, who declared for reelection last week, faces a potential primary challenge from two other Democrats, Paul P. Caianiello Jr. and Michael J. Pinga.

Cicione, the GOP chairman, on Thursday submitted Clarke’s name to the secretary of state along with four others for General Assembly seats: Damien Baldino, in House District 13, Elaina Goldstein, in Senate District 3, and Kofua Kula, in Senate District 5, all in Providence, and Lammis Vargas, in Pawtucket’s Senate District 15.

The Pawtucket Board of Canvassers on Monday ruled Vargas’ candidacy invalid, said Registrar Ken Magill.

The Providence canvassers did the same with the nominations of Baldino, Goldstein and Kulah.

Clarke, a onetime member of West Warwick’s Board of Canvassers, has run for Alves’ Senate seat twice. He said he hadn’t considered running a third time but that party leaders phoned him shortly after last week’s declarations deadline.

He predicted the Board of Elections would uphold his candidacy.

“The overriding and principally abiding decision of the canvassers have always got to be an attempt to translate the intent of the voters when they want to vote,” he said, “and to give them the privilege of casting their votes for whatever candidates have shown interest in running, and not to slice the argument so thin as to prevent people from running or to disqualify them ever.”

tbuford@projo.com