PROVIDENCE — Going against the advice of their own lawyer, members of the state Board of Elections yesterday refused to order Secretary of State A. Ralph Mollis, a Democrat, to release nominating papers for five disputed GOP candidates for the overwhelmingly Democratic General Assembly.

In the heated exchange that followed, state GOP Chairman Giovanni Cicione lamented what he called a “rigged” political system that doesn’t give challengers a fair chance, while Democratic Party lawyer Max Wistow, scolded Cicione in front of a gaggle of reporters for acting like a sore loser.

Standing outside the hearing room after the defeat of his appeal, Cicione said: “The most frustrating result today is that you can always say in a democracy that if you don’t like what they are doing up there, you vote them out. You elect somebody else. Well, you know what? The system is so rigged in this state that they don’t even let you elect someone else.”

With the dispute now headed to the state Supreme Court, Cicione said: “We want to know why these candidates were denied. The local boards have not yet told us that. They have not told the candidates that. …We’re going to keep fighting on this. It is too important. It is too much of a rigged system.”

After listening for a time, Wistow interjected: “Mr. Cicione seems like a decent enough fellow but it’s really totally inappropriate to go before an administrative board and then after he loses say it’s rigged….I can’t speak on behalf of the board, but I think it’s totally inappropriate for a lawyer to try a case in front of anybody and then after he loses say they are corrupt and rigged.

“He should have made that point up front and said I don’t want to be before you or I want a bigger board or whatever,” Wistow said.

The dispute centers on where Cicione filed notice that he was appointing the five candidates to openings on his party’s candidate lineup for legislative seats from Providence, Pawtucket and West Warwick. State law allows party chairmen to appoint candidates within 24 hours of the candidate-filing deadline to fill holes on their slate.

Cicione filed the names with the secretary of state’s office. Since individual candidates are required to file their declarations of candidacy with their local boards of canvassers, top election officials in Providence and Pawtucket took the position that party chairmen — in this case, Cicione — should have done the same with his nominees even though the law does not specifically say that.

With West Warwick poised to take the same position, Mollis’ office refused to issue nominating papers so the five disputed candidates can begin gathering the signatures required to get on the ballot; the GOP appealed to the Board of Elections for clarification of what the law requires, and Robert Kando, executive director of the state elections board, acknowledged for the first time yesterday that he advised the communities to hold off taking any formal action on their own until his board weighed in.

That put the decision on the fate of the five disputed Republican candidates — who include two of Governor Carcieri’s stalled appointees to the Board of Elections — in the hands of a Board of Elections that has been running two members short because the state Senate would not even read the names of Carcieri’s Republican appointees in its record.

They include: John Clarke, seeking to unseat Senate Finance Chairman Stephen Alves, D-West Warwick, and Elaina Goldstein, seeking to replace Sen. Rhoda Perry, the East Side Providence Democrat who chairs the Senate Committee on Health & Human Services. For both sets of candidates, it would be a rematch.

The other disputed candidates include the state GOP’s director of operations and community outreach, Lammis Vargas, seeking a Senate seat held for more than three decades by Pawtucket Democrat John McBurney; Kofua Kulah who hopes to oust Democratic Sen. Paul V. Jabour from his 5th District seat, representing Providence’s Federal Hill, and Damien Baldino running for a seat that longtime Rep. Steven Smith unexpectedly decided to vacate after filing reelection papers.

In a brief conversation this week, Smith cited mounting frustration with the direction of the General Assembly, and specifically its refusal to consider blocking tax cuts for high earners to help close a massive budget deficit last month. If Baldino is barred from the race, Smith’s decision clears the way for Providence Democrat John Carnevale to claim both the Democratic nomination and the seat.

With two vacant seats — and one newly appointed member absent — that left four state Board of Elections members to decide the case.

Since the law allowing party chairmen to nominate candidates does not specifically say where the names should be filed, Board of Elections lawyer Raymond Marcaccio urged the board to come down in favor of candidate-access to the ballot. But a motion by member Florence Gormley to allow the Republicans to collect their nominating papers went down on an initial 2-to-2 vote. A reverse motion — to deny them their papers based on a disputed “ambiguity” in the law — was approved unanimously, with Gormley saying the vote would at least give the GOP something to appeal to the Supreme Court.

And that is where Cicione said the GOP is headed — probably next week.

Responding to Wistow’s jabs, Cicione said: “To have two commissioners, without comment, go against the advice of their counsel after a long discussion, I think stinks and I’m upset about it. He referred to member Frank Rego and the chairman, John Daluz.

Meanwhile, in other business, the board opted to wait until after the November general election to even consider changing the rules surrounding provisional ballots, after a proposal to limit their use was roundly criticized by Common Cause, the ACLU, the Urban League, the Rhode Island League of Women Voters and others as being ill-timed and likely to disenfranchise voters.

Provisional ballots allow votes for the president and vice president by voters whose names are not on their local voting rolls for one reason or another, and by others who insist their names should be there. Of the 2,013 provisional ballots issued in 2006, all but 914 were ultimately counted, with the largest number of belatedly approved ballots in Providence.

kgregg@projo.com