Two URI students created and launched the website Rhode Island Elections Project, as a way to increase voter turnout and awareness through providing an unbiased search engine for political information in the state of Rhode Island.
The website was published in August by second-year Fabio Muscianisi and graduate student Nicholas Labriola, and aims to create a centralization of information.
Muscianisi explains that the inspiration for this project stemmed mainly from problems both he and Labriola noticed among voting in Rhode Island.
“More than two thirds of the seats in the house are uncompetitive,” Labriola said. Because Rhode Island is considered very solidly democratic, people perceive they can’t make any difference, which Labriola believes leads to less voter turnout and voters not caring.
“This lack of competition fosters bad governance… there has to be a choice for the voter,” Labriola said.
Without competition, elected officials become negligent, according to Labriola. Though officials will promise a lot during campaigns, when reached out to about real student issues, Labriola said it’s been challenging to get answers. Muscianisi notes they called some local officials 5-10 times and did not get a response.
Muscianisi was concerned that young adults and older adults alike have shown less interest in voting in district elections.
“Right now, with the midterms coming up in November, all the attention is really on a national level,” Labriola said.
Labriola believes the lack of power voters feel is exactly why they need to look more at the local level.
“There is a lot more common sense the further down you go on the levels,” Labriola said. “But no one knows about this… no one knows who the state house representative for URI is.”
This is why they created the Rhode Island Election Project, which is focused on creating a transparent, non-partisan platform for voters to be able to easily access one page and gather all the information needed to decide their vote, according to Labriola.
“I had difficulties, sometimes […] I did not know how to navigate the websites,” Muscianisi said. “This information, the more in depth you go, the harder it is to find.”
Muscianisi said the time he had to put in, almost two to three months, just to go through all the websites and find information on officials was grueling. He noted that even AI was not helpful because it would fabricate information.
“We are building an extensive database from many different sources,” Labriola said.
The website’s home page displays a search bar that individuals can search for a running or elected official and access information on campaign finance, past election results and campaign priorities. They can also type in an address and find what officials are in their area and find information from there, according to Labriola.
For the future, Labriola and Muscianisi have both expressed a desire to expand, however they are faced with a challenge of funding.
“We have two ideas in mind, first, to expand in the New England area, but also another idea we were thinking about and have discussed with other people, is to go even more in depth with school boards or municipalities,” Muscianisi said.
Labriola explains that they are in the works of talking with different people and organizations, especially Professor Emily Lynch, an American politics professor at URI, who he specifically notes has been a huge help. However both Labriola and Muscianisi have stressed the fact that they cannot go further without an institutional home or funding for their project.
Labriola and Muscianisi said they are very open to involving the community in this project and encourage students to reach out with any questions or suggestions and to check out their website at Rhode Island Elections Project.
