CRANSTON, R.I. (WPRI) — R.I. Attorney General Peter Neronha's office is investigating petition papers filed by the No Labels Party after local election officials discovered several dead people's names and signatures included on the paperwork, Target 12 has learned.

Neronha's office confirmed last week it's actively investigating the group's petition papers, which were submitted with the help of Advanced Micro Targeting, a contractor hired by No Labels to help gather signatures.

The No Labels Party earlier this year successfully gathered and submitted the nearly 20,000 signatures required to become a recognized party this election year. But it's now essentially a ghost party, after national leaders failed in their effort to recruit and nominate a viable third-party candidate to challenge the Democratic and Republican nominees for president.

The party will likely disappear in Rhode Island after this election cycle since no local, state or federal candidate is running under the No Labels political banner. A candidate this year would need to win at least 5% of the vote for the party to be recognized again moving forward.

The attorney general's office declined to comment on the investigation, but Target 12 independently confirmed the probe is focused on at least two municipalities where local election officials raised red flags with the party's petition papers. The Rhode Island Current first reported the irregularities in January.

In Cranston, elections director Nick Lima said the No Labels party submitted nearly 4,000 signatures for his office to review and turned them in all at once. As soon as he and his staff started going through them, however, Lima said they quickly noticed sheets filled with potential fraud.

The irregularities included the names and signatures of about a dozen dead people, he said.

"These are people who passed away two years ago, three years ago, four years ago," Lima told Target 12 this week, confirming he'd been contacted multiple times over the past couple months by the attorney general's office in connection to its probe.

"That had us take a second look at all those people and scrutinize them further because once you see a pattern you really want to delve into it as an election official and make sure that other signatures aren't being forged," he said.

In all, Cranston referred 17 pages of names and signatures that "rose to a level of suspicion" to the R.I. Board of Elections. Those pages were then referred to the attorney general's office, which opened its investigation earlier this year.

Lima said he wouldn't speculate on how the dead people's signatures got onto the petition papers, but he stressed the importance of local election officials vetting paperwork. All signatures are attested to by signature-gatherers under the pains and penalty of perjury.

"It's a felony," Lima said about any forged signatures on election paperwork. "Fraud is fraud, and we can't accept it or tolerate it in our elections process."

In Jamestown, canvassing clerk Keith Ford said he contacted local police in late January and submitted five No Labels petition papers with 14 "suspect signatures." He said his office contacted everyone on the papers and 10 of them confirmed they didn't sign any petition papers; one name had completed the form with a nonexistent address, he said.

"The Jamestown Police Department did start an investigation in which I was in contact with them several times," Ford told Target 12. "They then referred the case to the Rhode Island Attorney General's Office. Last I spoke with them it was still under investigation."

Gary Sasse, who registered the No Labels political effort in Rhode Island, confirmed the national group hired Advanced Micro Targeting to gather signatures. The local No Labels group hasn't spent any money in connection to the effort, according to campaign finance records.

"We had nothing to do with it directly," Sasse told Target 12 last week. "Our position is that we'd do everything to cooperate with the Board of Elections. But this issue was between the contractor and the people investigating the situation."

After the national party failed to come up with a third-party candidate for president, Sasse and the group's local attorney, former R.I. Supreme Court Justice Robert Flanders, asked the state Board of Election to dissolve the party locally. The board denied the request, as the state had already certified the nearly 20,000 signatures required to become a recognized party.

Texas-based Advanced Micro Targeting hired several different signature-gatherers to help the effort locally, but many of them appear to have come from out of state. No Labels petition papers in Cranston show multiple people's home addresses listed in Dallas, Texas.

No Labels chief strategist Ryan Clancy described the company as "an experienced signature-gathering firm," which helped them petition in Rhode Island.

"They employed petition-circulators who had to attend multiple trainings to ensure that they knew the laws in the state," he said.

Clancy also tried to downplay the seriousness of the allegations being investigated.

"Invalid signatures are not a sign of fraud, since invalidations could be the result of an election board applying an overly strict signature-matching standard," Clancy told Target 12 in a statement. "But if any Board has evidence of a specific petition-circulator who acted improperly, we support appropriate actions to hold them accountable."

Advanced Micro Targeting did not respond to a request for comment on Thursday.

The Texas political consulting firm registered with the R.I. Secretary of State's Office last July. The office in June threatened to revoke the firm's registration because it failed to file an annual report. In January, Sasse told the Current the company fired two staffers over the alleged forgeries.

The No Labels petition papers represent the latest in a string of questionable signatures submitted on campaign paperwork in recent years. Lt. Gov. Sabina Matos's congressional campaign last year came under fire after her nomination papers included names and signatures of several people across the state who said they never signed them.

Two people working for her campaign have since been charged criminally for forging paperwork; the both pleaded not guilty.

Separately, two teenagers in 2022 turned themselves in after being accused of faking signatures on nomination papers for a fellow teenager, Zachary Hurwitz, who was running for governor at the time. The teenagers who turned themselves in were charged with providing false documents.

Earlier this year, multiple cities and towns raised concerns of signature fraud tied to the nomination papers of then-presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, who has since suspended his campaign.

And just this week, the Woonsocket Board of Canvassers referred the nomination papers of mayoral candidate Keith Harrison to law enforcement after discovering the names and signatures of at least two dead people on his paperwork. He's denied forging any paperwork.

Lima said these issues have been popping up more frequently in recent years, even though the process itself hasn't changed in decades. Lima said he's not sure whether it's all a coincidence, or evidence of a bigger issue with how campaigns are gathering signatures.

But Lima said he's noticed political campaigns more frequently hiring outside firms to gather signatures on their behalf rather than building volunteer groups, as was more typical in the past.

"People don't come to their door as much because there's a little bit less social engagement in the world," he said. "It could be getting harder now to get a thousand signatures, and maybe that's why you see more statewide candidates relying on firms or paid staff to get those signatures where in the past there may have been more volunteers."