Alves

WEST WARWICK — The state police are investigating several allegations of voting irregularities in the primary election that ousted Stephen D. Alves from the state Senate seat he has held for eight terms.

Several detectives are working on the case, Lt. Col. Steven O’Donnell said yesterday. A report should be turned over to the attorney general’s office soon to determine whether any criminal activity has taken place, he said.

“The case is a top priority,” O’Donnell said.

Alves, who lost the primary race to Michael J. Pinga, a local baker, by a 17-vote margin, has asked the state Supreme Court to order a new election in Senate District 9, which covers all of West Warwick. Among the reasons Alves cited for a new election was that several registered Republicans were allowed to vote in the Democratic primary.

The high court, however, disclosed last week that it will not decide whether to hear the Alves’ case until Oct. 23, less than two weeks before the general election. A spokesman said that the court wanted to know the outcome of the state police investigation first.

That delay prompted Secretary of State A. Ralph Mollis to ask the court to move more quickly because his office is running out of time to get ballots printed for the Nov. 4 election. The staff doesn’t know whether to put Alves or Pinga on the ballot in the general election. There is no Republican candidate in the race.

In response to Mollis’ request, Supreme Court Justice Maureen McKenna Goldberg has agreed to meet with him tomorrow to discuss the matter, according to a court spokesman. Mollis said he had hoped the court would decide by yesterday whether to declare a winner or remove the race from the ballot.

The meeting comes two days after the filing deadline for voters to request absentee ballots. Some voters may be placed at a disadvantage the longer the court goes without declaring a victor in the race, said Chris Barnett, spokesman for Mollis.

As of last week, 328 absentee ballots had been requested by voters in District 9. Forty-one of those will be sent to foreign countries. And as of yet, none of the ballots has a candidate in the questioned Senate race. Those ballots have yet to be printed, Barnett said.

“Every day that goes by makes it a little less likely that every vote will be able to be counted by Nov. 4,” said Barnett.

Although the court did not act on the Alves case last week, it did refuse to hear a similar request for a new election in Warwick. The court, by refusing to hear the appeal of David Bennett, upheld the Board of Elections’ earlier decision to certify Erin Lynch as the primary winner in that Senate race.

The court ruled on the Warwick case because it said no legal investigation was pending as there is in West Warwick. The state police were first drawn into the investigation by a complaint filed Oct. 1 by Democratic Party Chairman William Lynch, who asked the state police to investigate “voter irregularities” in the Warwick and West Warwick Democratic primaries. In the complaint, Lynch offered anecdotal evidence of people impersonating registered voters and fraudulently voting in the Alves-Pinga race, and made reference to Republicans who voted “knowingly and intentionally” in both Democratic primaries.

The state police are looking into both situations, O’Donnell said. But, he said, the specifics offered in the Alves case by the party chairman gave the police more to go on than the more general allegations in the Warwick case.

“It’s hard in any election to chase leads that may or may not exist,” O’Donnell said. “We tried to go after substantiated information, rather than fishing expeditions.”

O’Donnell confirmed that the police are also looking into other allegations, made in several anonymous letters, over the election in West Warwick. He would not elaborate on the nature of the allegations.

In recent days, troopers have visited residents at Msgr. DeAngelis Manor in West Warwick because, O’Donnell said, complaints came in that residents voted in the primary who shouldn’t have voted, and that some votes were influenced prior to the election.

Records show that at least 10 voters listed as Republicans with the West Warwick Board of Canvassers voted in the Democratic primary. Four of those voters reached by The Journal last week said they had disaffiliated from the Republican Party after voting in a previous primary. Five others could not be reached or declined to comment, and one Republican said he was told by poll workers that his ballot was taken out of the ballot box after he was mistakenly allowed to cast it.

The Warwick Board of Canvassers has not released a list of Republicans who voted in the Democratic primary, though attorney Angel Taveras, who represents Alves and Lynch, argued that as many as 19 Republicans voted in the Warwick Democratic primary. He also claimed that there were more ballots cast than signed voter forms.

Filing the complaint, Democratic Chairman Lynch said yesterday, is as far as he plans to go.

“I haven’t had any contact with the state police,” he said. “Once it’s in their hands, it’s up to them to do whatever they deem is appropriate.”

tbuford@projo.com