MOURA

PROVIDENCE — For a handful of candidates and many thousand voters, it was judges who had the final word in deciding last November’s elections.

Disputes over how recounts should be handled resulted in a bitter legal struggle that pitted the state Board of Elections against candidates defeated by agonizingly small margins. Inaugurations were repeatedly delayed as a legion of lawyers petitioned a Superior Court judge, and later the state Supreme Court, to intervene.

The issue subsided abruptly when the final candidate conceded, silencing the debate and leaving many critical issues unresolved.

But yesterday, several of those candidates sought to resurrect the discussion, hoping to bolster newly filed legislation that they say will prevent similar electoral controversies.

“This bill is about all of us, not just the candidates,” said Republican Allan W. Fung, who lost the Cranston mayoral race by 79 votes out of 32,000 votes cast. “Voting is the greatest privilege an American can have.”

The legislation, unveiled yesterday by Sen. Paul E. Moura, D-East Providence, and Rep. Edith H. Ajello, D-Providence, seeks to codify and expand the voting rights granted last year by now-retired Superior Court Judge Stephen J. Fortunato Jr.

In his rulings, upheld by the Supreme Court, Fortunato rejected several Board of Elections regulations, including the denial of public access to election ballots. The legislation would require that election officials make ballots available for “inspection and copying by any person.”

The bill would also compel the Board of Elections to manually review any ballot that does not register a vote when inserted in the optical scanning machines, a procedure election officials had vigorously opposed during court hearings.

Under the proposed law, board members would be asked to scrutinize rejected ballots during recounts to determine whether a voter’s intent could be discerned. In the past, election officials would discard a ballot that had been rejected by the machine, although a voter clearly circled his selections rather than completing the segmented arrow pointing to a candidate’s name.

“We do not and cannot let machines alone decide hotly contested elections for us,” Ajello said at a news conference yesterday at the Old State House on Benefit Street. “I have every hope this will pass this year.”

House Speaker William J. Murphy and Senate President Joseph A. Montalbano have not yet reviewed the bill, filed last Thursday, their spokesmen said.

Though Moura took pains not to criticize the Board of Elections, it did not appear that the board had endorsed the legislation.

The board did not assist in drafting the bill and board members did not attend yesterday’s announcement. Robert Kando, the board’s executive director, was not available for comment. But in an interview, the board’s acting chairman, Thomas V. Iannitti Sr., cautioned lawmakers against authorizing manual reviews to second-guess the Optech scanners.

“It would be À la Florida and the hanging chads situation,” Iannitti said. “Why leave it up to chance?”

Rhode Island was considered progressive when it installed the Optech scanners a decade ago, long before the 2002 Help America Vote Act prompted the gradual retirement of lever machines across the country.

But the federal legislation did not mandate a paper ballot or require public access to ballots, and last year’s electoral controversies drew criticism from voting-rights advocates who said the state’s election policies have not kept pace with its technological advancement.

Many states have been debating bills that would expand access to paper ballots, according to Kay Stimson, spokeswoman for the National Association of Secretaries of States. “It’s a fairly common conversation going on,” she said yesterday.

“It’s a trend across the country,” said Doug Chapin, director of Electionline.org, a nonprofit organization that tracks election reform. “Even where machines are used, there’s starting to be some kind of post-election manual component” in recounts and in routine audits scrutinizing the accuracy of the machines.

As in Rhode Island, Minnesota relies on optical scanners on Election Day. But afterward, all recounts require a manual review of every ballot and a determination of voter intent on those marked improperly.

An informal survey last summer in Rhode Island found deep skepticism about the fairness of elections. The group Ocean State Action interviewed more than 50,000 voters in the state and heard many concerns about whether votes were being counted correctly, according to Meghan Purvis, the group’s policy director. The concern was particularly prevalent among low-income and minority voters.

“They don’t trust that the system is working for them,” said Purvis, whose organization helped draft the voting-rights bill. “It’s very pervasive.”

The Rhode Island Affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union also helped draft the legislation. Though it does not address every voting-rights concern, it will resolve much of the confusion that bedeviled the recent recounts, said Steven Brown, executive director of the local ACLU branch.

“This bill will try to ensure that people’s votes really count,” Brown said.

In addition to granting access to ballots and mandating manual reviews of ballots rejected during recounts, the bill would also expand the scope of recounts.

Under the legislation, mail-in ballots and provisional ballots would also be recounted for the first time.

The bill would increase to 48 hours the period in which a voter can submit proper identification. In the last election, voters who could not produce identification on Election Day were disqualified.

The bill would also alter the handling of provisional ballots cast by registered voters who vote in the wrong precinct. Instead of counting those ballots only toward federal offices, election officials would be instructed to tabulate votes for citywide and statewide positions as well.

“We believe this is a good government bill,” said former East Providence Mayor Joseph Larisa Jr., who also attended yesterday’s news conference. Larisa missed reelection by 16 votes. Last November, he said, “the process took too long because we had to fight the Board of Elections.”

bgedan@projo.com