WPRO Newsroom
After a vote that was deemed invalid on Thursday evening, the Rhode Island Republican Party announced late Sunday afternoon that Mark Smiley would be the new RIGOP chairman.
In an email announcement, outgoing party chair Mark Zaccaria said there had been a detailed investigation into the issues that caused last Thursday’s election results to be called into question. Multiple recounts were done of the votes for both Smiley and his opponent, Dr. Dan Harrop. There was also thought to be one extra vote than there were eligible members.
“The problem was that our source documents from the double check-in for voting showed one less ballot issued than we had in the stack we counted," said Zaccaria in a statement.
Subsequent review of those documents identified the one eligible voter; the person was correctly issued a ballot, but a clerical error did not indicate they were eligible to vote.
“This decision hinged on a one-vote margin,” Zaccaria said, “So when faced with a one-vote discrepancy there was a concern about validating the tally.”
On Sunday, Zaccaria reversed his decision to rule Thursday's vote "invalid" and instead declared Mark Smiley the winner.
“Both candidates for State Chair had strong support and either would have done a fine job,” Zaccaria said. “I now look forward to working closely with Dr. Dan Harrop, the other candidate in last week’s race, under Chairman Smiley’s leadership.”
The meeting will be resumed on Tuesday, April 2nd at Shriners’ Hall, in Cranston, at 7:00pm. At that time these findings will be formally reported to the membership of the State Central Committee of the RI GOP. Chairman Smiley will take the gavel to conclude that meeting and to begin his official tenure.
