Rhode Island asks very little of the people who cir­cu­late nom­in­a­tion papers. Col­lect the sig­na­tures of registered voters and swear one sen­tence under oath: that each per­son signed in your pres­ence. That is the entire safe­guard.

It is the single mech­an­ism our law relies on to con­firm that the names on a can­did­ate’s papers are real, that the voters actu­ally signed, and that no one filled a page at a kit­chen table and called it demo­cracy.

When that oath means noth­ing, noth­ing behind it can be trus­ted. That is not a par­tisan obser­va­tion. It is the express hold­ing of the Rhode Island Supreme Court.

In Boucher v. Begin, decided in 1997, the Court con­fron­ted a sit­ting state rep­res­ent­at­ive whose sworn affi­davit turned out to be false. It ruled that the wit­ness­ing require­ment in our elec­tion law is sub­stant­ive, not a tech­nic­al­ity. It must be met in fact, not merely in spirit. And a false affi­davit, the court held, can­not be used to val­id­ate sig­na­tures that were never signed in the col­lector’s pres­ence. The court went fur­ther, explain­ing that the require­ment exists pre­cisely to pre­vent nom­in­a­tion papers from being “left with a fam­ily or at a nurs­ing home for other voters to endorse.” The justices under­stood, nearly 30 years ago, exactly how this safe­guard gets abused.

We are watch­ing it get abused now, and not in isol­a­tion.

Rhode Island has lived through sig­na­ture scan­dals in three con­sec­ut­ive elec­tion cycles. Forged names, includ­ing names of the dead, appeared on a con­gres­sional cam­paign’s papers in 2023, and two cam­paign work­ers were sen­tenced. In 2024, forged sig­na­tures sur­faced on other fil­ings, and a state grand jury handed up indict­ments that the pub­lic did not learn about until this sum­mer. Two of those defend­ants remain at large. This year, chal­lenges over how sig­na­tures were gathered and attested have again landed before the Board of Elec­tions. The pat­tern is not subtle, and the pub­lic is right to be los­ing patience.

The fixes are known, and they keep dying at the State House. A bill to extend the com­pressed elec­tions cal­en­dar, which gives can­did­ates and object­ors barely a day to act, failed this year without so much as a Sen­ate hear­ing. A pro­posal to let voters sign and verify nom­in­a­tion papers through a secure online portal passed the House and stalled in a Sen­ate com­mit­tee. These are not rad­ical ideas. They are house­keep­ing, and the Gen­eral Assembly can­not be bothered to pass them.

So the bur­den falls where it should not have to fall, on ordin­ary can­did­ates will­ing to file an objec­tion and sit through a hear­ing to defend a rule every­one already agreed to fol­low. That is not how elec­tion integ­rity is sup­posed to work. It should not depend on a private cit­izen’s will­ing­ness to fight.

A con­ver­sa­tion needs to take place about what account­ab­il­ity does and does not mean. A can­did­ate accused of a false affi­davit is entitled to every pro­tec­tion the law affords, includ­ing the right to remain silent. But silence has con­sequences in a civil pro­ceed­ing, and a false oath has con­sequences for the sig­na­tures beneath it. Those are not pun­ish­ments inven­ted by the other party. They are the logical res­ult of the rules them­selves, writ­ten into our stat­utes and con­firmed by our highest court.

The Rhode Island Repub­lican Party is ask­ing for three things, none of which should be con­tro­ver­sial. Enforce the wit­ness­ing oath as the sub­stant­ive require­ment the Supreme Court says it is. Extend the elec­tion cal­en­dar so that chal­lenges can be brought and addressed fairly, and give the Board of Elec­tions clear, writ­ten guid­ance before the Septem­ber primary, not after it, so that can­did­ates on every side know the stand­ard in advance.

An oath is a prom­ise made under pen­alty of law. If we let it become a mean­ing­less sig­na­ture, we are not pro­tect­ing access to the bal­lot. We are hol­low­ing it out. Rhode Islanders of every party deserve bet­ter, and the fix is well within reach if our lead­ers would simply act.