KINGSTON â The 2020 election is complete, but a team of researchers at the University of Rhode Island is still crunching the numbers â not the number of votes, but the statistics used to determine the efficiency of in-person voting. I can say with confidence, from a URI VOTES perspective, that we had a successful election season this fall, said Gretchen Macht, director of the URI Voter OperaTions and Election Systems (URI VOTES) project. Some lines took longer than an hour, while others averaged 20 minutes, which was nothing out of the ordinary.
Working with faculty and students from Auburn University and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Macht s research group collected data in Rhode Island, Nebraska and Los Angeles.
By Nicholas Bernardo
Nicholas Bernardo is the equity and culture coordinator at DelSesto Middle School in Providence.
In his commentary last month (“Providence urgently needs more charter schools”), Brown University’s Dr. Pablo Rodriguez underscored several longstanding issues in Providence schools, from broken classroom cultures to school conditions and subpar academic outcomes. To remedy these, he passionately endorsed wholesale charter school adoption, which he asserts would present policymakers and families with real agency in accessing quality schooling and shift the educational landscape for all. Taking this step, he argues, is our “moral and ethical obligation.”
Dr. Rodriguez and I agree on the problem but the solution demands critical review. Indeed, the capital city faces a real challenge as the state-controlled school district works to rethink, repair and rebuild education. Because the moment demands urgency, all options are on the table, and charters can be