Quonset needs a casino like it needs a hole in the head.

We need businesses locating in Quonset that build things - not businesses that suck the money out of our own resident's pockets.

No one - I repeat no one - is going to build a destination casino in RI bigger than Foxwoods. That would be a fool's errand - especially now that Florida is considering allowing destination casinos. Where would you rather fly into for a romp - Quonset or Miami Beach? Just saying...

The ultimate problem is that a large chunk of RI's gambling dollars come from Mass - where they will be building new casinos. RI IS going to lose gambling revenue - there is no way around it. Letting Twin River AND Newport Grand put in table games will not stop the loss. Many gamblers are convenience gamblers who will travel the shortest distance to lose their money.

Not to mention the issue of the Narragansett Indians and their ability to build their own casino (which will also compete for our gambling dollars) if RI allows a casino to go into any venue.

It was a nice run while it lasted, but regional competition is going to eat away at our gambling revenues. I would hope that our elected officials do more to prepare RI for this eventuality by making our state more appetizing to businesses which produce things to make up for the inevitable revenue loss in gambling dollars.

In the July 21, 2011 Providence Journal, Ed Fitzpatrick documents the latest contortions by the Rhode Island Board of Elections to make life more difficult for the Moderate Party of Rhode Island.

http://www.projo.com/news/efitzpatrick/edward_fitzpatrick_21_07-21-11_ANP955O_v25.456ce.html

In a nutshell, the Board of Elections has decided to save a couple of hundred dollars by replacing Voter Registration forms that offer a multiple choice list of political parties with one that offers a blank space where a party name must be written in.  The BoE's logic is that they won't have to replace out-of-date forms if/when the number of parties in Rhode Island changes - an event that happens maybe once a decade.

This is a decision to save $500 at the expense of voter education and basic fairness to a new political party.  New voters deserve to know what their choices are for political parties, and new political parties that have been put through the wringer to come into existence deserve to have that existence published on the State's official Voter Registration form.

It was this same Board which decided to aggressively defend against the Moderate Party's successful federal lawsuit challenging sections of Rhode Island's now unconstitutional (and still unchanged) ballot access laws.  The Board of Elections had to cover more than $30,000 in Moderate Party legal fees as a result of a losing defense of this grossly unfair law, not to mention whatever costs were involved in their own legal fees.

It would seem to me that the mission of the Rhode Island Board of Elections should be to facilitate the most open and fair elections environment possible.  Instead, some of the decisions made by this most important board smack of political partisanship and gamesmanship.

For the record, just after the Moderate Party was recognized in August of 2009, we were supplied by the Board of Elections new Voter Registration forms that included the Moderate Party as one of the choices, as shown below.

http://www.moderate-ri.org/English_VRF_Aug_2009.pdf

The new form on the BoE website now looks like this .

In the past few months, we have received complaints from voters who have been given forms that did not include the Moderate Party as a party registration choice at several local Boards of Canvassers.  As an example, the North Providence city website  has a Voter Registration form online that only includes the Democrat and Republican parties as options.

We have also received complaints that when changing addresses at the Department of Motor Vehicles, voters were not given the choice to re-register as Moderates.  Gov. Chafee's administration has been very prompt in addressing this matter, identifying an issue with their computer system and working to correct the systems problem, as well as providing training to customer service staff.
 

I am left shaking my head and wondering at how Rhode Island has ended up with such a dysfunctional electoral oversight mechanism.  The Board of Elections is accountable to no one.  Members of the Board are appointed to terms of more than a decade.  The Governor appoints members of the Board as necessary.  It is my sincere hope that future appointments yield a more balanced and even-keeled board which has as its main mission an open and fair electoral process.