Final voter turnout in R.I. still being tallied

PROVIDENCE—Ballots were still being counted in Rhode Island on Wednesday, and election officials don’t yet know if the state surpassed its record for voter turnout.

Officials had projected that more than 500,000 voters could turn out for Tuesday’s election. Board of Elections Executive Director Robert Kando said it probably won’t be clear whether any records were broken until some mail and provisional ballots are counted Thursday.

The previous record was set in 1992, when more than 453,000 voters cast ballots in the Ocean State in the presidential election. The 2008 tally stood at 446,005 with all precincts reporting Wednesday.

Some glitches in local voting led to the recounting of ballots in Cranston and Smithfield.

In Cranston, some write-in ballots were inadvertently counted twice at the polling place at the DiPrata Society on Walnut Grove Avenue. They were recounted on Wednesday and didn’t affect the outcome in any races.

In Smithfield, ballots were printed with the name of a candidate who had withdrawn from the race. The machines would not read the misprinted ballots. However on Wednesday, the machines were configured to count the ballots.

“We’ll get accurate results for everybody and we’re going to provide the results as soon as possible,“ Kando said.

Before the new ballots were counted, a Democrat was leading in the race for the fifth seat on the Smithfield Town Council.

After the count, a Republican pulled ahead leaving the outcome up to mail-in ballots.

NBC 10’s Mario Hilario reported that there are about 20,000 state mail-in ballots that need to be counted, including 700 in Smithfield.

The Board of Elections expects those to be counted on Thursday.