The state Board of Elections is investigating.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — A half-dozen past and present Providence police officers may have committed a felony by registering to vote from the police station's address: 325 Washington St.

Providence Police Commissioner Steven M. Paré says the officers with whom he spoke — including one who actually lives and votes in Massachusetts — told him they have "no idea" how they landed on the capital city's voter rolls at that address.

But "it happened and I need to get to the bottom of why it happened, so we can correct it. And obviously, if there is a violation, then we will look at whether it is prosecutable," Paré told The Providence Journal earlier this week.

These misplaced — and potentially illegitimate — Rhode Island "voters" are not alone.

State law requires a voter to register from "his or her fixed and established domicile." There are, however, at least 125 people on voter rolls across Rhode Island who claim they live in a UPS store, a U.S. post office, a gas station on Hartford Avenue in Johnston, a cellphone store in a Newport strip mall, and scores of other commercial buildings and vacant lots.

Narragansett, North Kingstown, West Greenwich, Johnston and Newport also have voters listed as living in their police stations.

The state Board of Elections does not know how many of the 125 voted. The board and municipal officials around the state are working on that question.

The list, compiled by two-time gubernatorial candidate Ken Block, has elections officials across the state scrambling to verify how many potentially illegitimate — and illegal — voters they have on their rolls voting in elections that were decided, in some cases, by a single vote.

Block's findings also raise questions about flaws in the state's voter-registration system at a time when state lawmakers are considering bills to repeal Voter ID and create automatic voter registration with each new driver's license.

Block says he is not yet free to talk about the methodology, financial sponsors (if any) and end goal of the research he conducted as part of a national voter fraud project he described on his WatchdogRI.org website this way: "Use voter registration and voter history data to identify voter fraud within a state and between states."

But it appears he stopped at an arbitrary point after finding the 125 examples he gave to the state Board of Elections. The state board then sent the names of the registered voters at each of these questionable addresses to city and town boards of canvassers.

Local election officials are taking them seriously.

On May 1, Barrington became one of the first communities to send letters to the purported home addresses of people "registered to vote from an address, which is likely not your residence."

Block found at least four registered voters in Barrington who claimed to live in the UPS store next to the frozen yogurt shop at 18 Maple Ave. (Asked by The Journal if any of these "voters" worked at this UPS, assistant manager Kyle Lamarine shook his head no and said, "There are just two of us who work here.")

Barrington's letter to these individuals notes that "registering to vote... [or] voting in an election from an address which is not your residence is a felony under RI General Law ... punishable by up to a $5,000 fine and/or 10 years in prison .... Enclosed you will find a new voter-registration form."

Town Clerk Meredith DeSisto reports that the town has gotten a response from only one of the four voters who listed the UPS store as his or her home. The man — who, according to the secretary of state's office, voted last November using the UPS store as his home address — told the town he now lives on Plymouth Road in East Providence. Based on that, DeSisto said, she struck his name from the Barrington voter list.

The Journal was unable to reach the other UPS voters on the Barrington list.

Earlier this week, a spokeswoman reported that Secretary of State Nellie Gorbea has taken steps to remove 26 addresses of police stations, post offices, UPS stores and vacant lots from the state's central database of legitimate addresses. Block found 55 "voters" at those locations.

Robert Rapoza, acting director of the state Board of Elections, suggests one possible explanation for the problem cases: "The current voter-registration form asks for both residential and mailing addresses. Therefore it is possible these fields were not sufficiently clear to these individuals."

Regarding Providence officers registering to vote at the station, police spokeswoman Lindsay Lague mentioned a law that allows any "law enforcement officer," including state and local police, to use their "official business address in lieu of a residence address" on their driver's license.

But the Board of Elections told The Journal: "Neither state law [nor] state regulations contain any provision permitting law-enforcement officers to register to vote from any address other than their residence address."

Paré, the police commissioner, said the four officers still on the force who were registered to vote at the station gave him various explanations.

He said Detective Dwight Eddy told him he lives and votes in Massachusetts. Officer Kenneth Wiggington told him he lives in East Providence and has never voted in Providence. Officer Kensuke Matsumoto lived a quarter-mile from the police station until recently. Sgt. David Tejada told him he used the police station address to register a vehicle in 2015, but never deliberately changed his home address in the city for voting.

According to the Providence Board of Canvassers, only two of these officers — Matsumoto and Tejada — voted in the last election while still registered at 325 Washington St. Of the two former police officers Block found, one voted in Providence in the last election. He could not be reached for comment.

Tejada and Wiggington were also unavailable for comment.

But Matsumoto, who now lives in East Greenwich, told The Journal he does not recall how he registered to vote, but believes he has used the same address — the police station — since 2003 because a field training officer, now deceased, told him and other recruits that this was what police did.

Eddy, who lives and votes in Massachusetts, said: "This completely blindsided me. I have never voted in the city of Providence. And since [this came up], I have made sure I have been removed from the [city] voter rolls."

Asked if he recalled checking the box on a Rhode Island driver's-license application that would have signed him up to vote in Rhode Island, as if he lived in the police station, he said: "Of course not. Absolutely not."

Did he unwittingly break the law? No, he said emphatically. He "didn't register to vote in the city."

"I never checked the box .... I have no idea where it came from or why this happened."