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A 39-year-old man was killed on May 12 when a mortar-style firework was placed on his head and set off, according to police in Westerly, Rhode Island. 

A recent autopsy report of David Ziegenfuss lists the cause of death as a “blast injury” to the head and the manner of death as accidental, Westerly Police Chief Paul Gingerella told the Providence Journal. Those involved in the incident were drinking alcohol, he said. 

“It appears they were messing around, and they placed a firework on top of his head,” the chief told the Journal. 

An investigation into the circumstances of the death at the home at Pound Road continues, Gingerella said. 

The mix of high-risk activity with alcohol use is dangerous, Gingerella said. 

“The involvement of alcohol increases the dangers of illegal activities exponentially,” Gingerella told the Journal. 

The mortar-type firework used is illegal in Rhode Island. 

According to the 2023 US Consumer Product Safety Commission Fireworks Annual Report, there were eight reported fireworks-related deaths the prior year, with the majority of deaths associated with mortar-style devices. Five of those deaths were due to fireworks misuse. 

The agency is reporting 159 fireworks-related deaths between 2008 and 2023, for an average of 9.9 deaths per year. 

Family members set up a GoFundMe page to help with end-of-life expenses. 

The page says Ziegenfuss was airlifted from Westerly to Yale New Haven Hospital, where he died. 

His brother wrote that Ziegnefuss was an “adoring father to his son, a fun uncle, a listening ear and a caring shoulder. He was very loved by his family and friends.” 

Gingerella said the state’s Attorney General’s office will determine any pending charges.

For seven years, a four-letter mistake has haunted Common Cause Executive Director John Marion.

In drafting legislation to require a post-election review verifying accuracy and security of primary and general election results, Marion wrote “statewide” rather than “state.” In doing so, Marion inadvertently let legislative races skirt this audit requirement, which applied to other local, state and federal races. The bill passed, mistake included, much to Marion’s dismay.

At last, Marion can at last rest his troubled mind, with updated legislation approved by the Rhode Island General Assembly and signed into law by Gov. Dan McKee in June that adds state legislative races to what is known as a risk-limiting audit.

The new law is one of a half-dozen elections and voting-related bills to clear the Rhode Island State House this year. Most of the approved changes offer slight improvements rather than sweeping reforms, but that doesn’t mean they are unimportant, Marion said.

“Just because there wasn’t a signature success doesn’t mean we didn’t advance election administration and voting rights,” he said. “There’s good hygiene that needs to take place sometimes.”

Even more so when it rides the coattails of scandal.

Among the new laws is one born out of the signature scandal that enveloped Sabina Matos’ congressional campaign last year. In addition to a criminal investigation and charges against the pair of campaign consultants alleged to be responsible for the fake signatures, the scandal laid bare problems with the signature review process. 

The law cuts through the confusion by requiring local election workers to notify state officials when they spot potentially fraudulent signatures, setting off a process by which the state elections board then notifies other municipalities and, potentially, reviews the suspicious signatures itself. 

Marion lauded the legislature for taking swift action.

“Too often, we see scandals occur and people say there should be some reform to address the scandal but there’s never a reform,” he said. “It’s good they did it now, before this faded from memory.”

Voting by mail enhanced

Also fresh on lawmakers’ minds is the sweeping 2022 Let RI Vote Act, which dramatically expanded voter access including the option of no-excuse mail ballots. 

“This is our first presidential election since the Let RI Vote Act, so we’re still trying to determine if these changes need to be tweaked or expanded upon,” said Miguel Nunez, executive director for the Rhode Island Board of Elections.

Lawmakers this year agreed to state elections board-generated proposals to open mail drop boxes earlier and tack on three more days for local boards of canvassers to accept mail ballot applications.

As mail ballots grow in popularity among local voters, so have numbers of just-missed-the-deadline applicants, whose mailed forms arrive a day or two late, said Nick Lima, elections director for the city of Cranston. Not only do late applicants miss a chance to mail their ballots, but the late submissions still require local election workers to file needless paperwork indicating the application has been rejected. 

“It’s just an administrative deadline, so it didn’t make sense for the law to be so rigid,” Lima said.

Especially because one-third of late applicants for mail ballots never ended up voting in-person after their applications were rejected, according to analysis of 2020 and 2022 elections by the Rhode Island Board of Elections.

Hassle-free primaries for independent voters

Saving local election workers time and hassle is also the intent behind another new, Secretary of State-backed law that removes the requirement for voters to affiliate, or change affiliations, before participating in a party primary.

The phenomenon of affiliating then disaffiliating is particularly prevalent in Rhode Island, where nearly half of registered voters typically identify as independent. Many also want to detach themselves from a party label immediately after a primary, creating thousands of forms for local elections workers to sift through, said Secretary of State Gregg Amore.

Removing the affiliation requirement also eases the process for voters who might forget to change their affiliation prior to a primary and therefore be ineligible to participate. Amore expected to see an uptick in primary election participation under the new law, though the upcoming September primaries may be too soon for the change to take hold in public perception.

Amore’s backing also helped secure passage for another bill that will apply to upcoming elections, specifically, the ballot questions, which now must be written in “plain language” at an 8th-grade reading level. 

“There’s a growing movement in government and elections administration to use plain language and this is really important,” Marion said. 

He added, “It’s nice to see it pass without taking years and years.”

Better luck next year, same-day voter registration

The same cannot be said for the push for same-day voter registration, which has failed to gain traction on Smith Hill for four years. Acknowledging lawmakers’ hesitancy to change longstanding state policy, Common Cause diluted its proposal this year, pitching a change to the state constitution that would eliminate the 30-day residency requirement rather than enshrining same-day registration in the state’s guiding document. Still, the proposed constitution amendment, also supported by Amore, failed to advance out of committee in either chamber.

Marion was undeterred.

“In our experience, constitutional amendments often take several cycles to gain momentum,” he said. “It’s an educational process. As we begin to talk about this more we realize that not just the public but lawmakers don’t appreciate how much Rhode Island is an outlier.”

Twenty-two other states and Washington D.C. already allow same day voter registration. Rhode Island is also one of three states that enshrines its voter registration deadline in the constitution, Marion said.

ConCon question returns

Which opens up another avenue to the same end: a constitutional convention. Voters will get a chance to decide this November whether to take advantage of the once-in-a-decade opportunity to take a fresh look at the state’s governing document. 

While appetite for the decennial gathering has waned in recent decades — the last constitutional convention was held in 1986 — Sen. Sam Zurier is eying a prospective convention to settle debate over alternative voting methods. 

Following his leadership of a Senate panel tasked with studying various voting options, Zurier, a Providence Democrat, pitched a legislative reform that would have removed the constitutional provision for plurality voting. His bill, along with a separate proposal by fellow Providence Democratic Rep. Rebecca Kislak to offer ranked-choice voting in presidential preference primaries, both failed to advance beyond committee this year.

Zurier was unsurprised.

“It was more of an effort to introduce the concept,” he said of his legislation. “I did not see this change as something that would happen quickly.”

Especially given objections by election administrators who called for more education and equipment before considering such a dramatic overhaul to how voting works in Rhode Island.

Ranked-choice voting: More work to do

High-profile state or national races where a crowded field produces a winner with a low percentage of voters may help galvanize reform, especially now that Rhode Island has local organizers ready to capitalize on that momentum, Marion said. That includes Ocean State Ranked Choice Voting, a nonprofit that launched last year in the midst of the 12-way Democratic primary for the 1st Congressional District seat.

Organization leaders have been making the rounds to farmers markets and summer festivals, in addition to traditional meetings at town halls and on Smith Hill to educate voters on their preferred voting alternative, said Leah Creiglow, secretary of the board of directors.

“This current presidential election and the lack of choice overwhelmingly people are feeling is another example of why we need a system that favors voters over power dynamics,” Creiglow said. “We are really trying to capitalize on this.”

Two other changes that could have helped local and state election administrators through what is expected to be an exhausting and turbulent election cycle remain in legislative purgatory. One would have banned “fraudulent and synthetic media” — more commonly known as “deepfakes” — in the 90 days leading up an election. 

An amended version passed the House but stalled in the Senate, in part because of hesitation over the industry-backed amendments which exempted creators of the technology from facing sanctions for its use.

Priorities: Protecting voters and elections workers

Having seen how AI-generated robocalls sent to New Hampshire voters ahead of the state’s February presidential primary hurt election participation, Amore was worried for Rhode Island.

“It’s not necessarily the attacks against candidates I fear, but the misinformation about voting that will intimidate or restrict the ability of people to vote,” Amore said.

However, he acknowledged the difficulties in legislating guardrails around a new and evolving technology, pledging to take another crack again next year. Also on Amore’s 2025 legislative priorities list is revival of a failed bill that would increase penalties for those who threaten election administrators and poll workers. 

Rhode Island is not Maricopa County, Arizona, Lima acknowledged. But hostility toward election workers is not confined to battleground states. Last year, he and his coworkers arrived at Cranston City Hall to find the office window shattered, a rock lying on the floor inside.

Lima didn’t think the perpetrator meant to aim for the election office, but it rattled his colleagues, nonetheless.

“It’s important for us to let election administrators know ‘we have your back,’” Amore said. “In many states, they are playing defense on voting reform. We want to still keep playing offense.”