PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Rhode Island's voter rolls contain as many as 189,000 more names than they should, a Providence Journal analysis shows.

Based on estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau, Rhode Island would be expected to have 592,672 registered voters.

But the state has 781,770 people listed as eligible to vote in the Nov. 8 election, according to the voter registration database maintained by Secretary of State Nellie M. Gorbea. That's an excess of 189,098.

"Oh, my! Wow! Holy crap!" Brandon S. Bell, the state's Republican Party chairman said in reaction to The Journal's analysis. "I have to wrap my head around this, but that's a really huge number."

After digesting it a bit further, he continued. "I wouldn't want to throw out words like 'fraud' and 'rigged,' " he said. "The integrity of the entire system is at stake."

"Donald Trump talks about voter fraud," said Rep. Joseph Trillo, the Republican presidential candidate's honorary state campaign chairman. "If this is the case that there's this many people, this is really of concern. What are the safeguards that these 189,000 people can't vote in two jurisdictions?"

"Voter fraud is very rare," said Gorbea, a Democrat. "Elections are community exercises. There's a lot of people involved."

That would make it very hard for people to commit fraud by voting in place of someone else, she said.

"I don't buy that," Trillo said. "Nobody does."

Rep. Joseph McNamara, the state's Democratic Party chairman, said state law requiring voters to show identification to enter the polls would block fraud.

"I think it would be extremely difficult today for someone to vote who is fraudulent," McNamara said. "I have complete confidence in the system."

Gorbea said that Rhode Islanders can "absolutely" trust the integrity of the state's elections.

The two most common ways that people are found on voter rolls when they shouldn't be there is when officials don't realize that voters have moved or died.

Under Gorbea — who was elected in 2014, in part on a promise to clean up the voter rolls — the state has joined a multistate consortium called ERIC (Electronic Registration Information Center) in which states share information when someone registers to vote or changes their address with the motor vehicle department. That allows voters' previous states to start the process of removing them from the voter list.

But the state just entered that program this year, Gorbea said, and has been hampered by state law that bars removing someone within 90 days of an election. With three elections this year — presidential primary, state primary and general election — that didn't leave much time to clean up the lists.

And, she said, it's not a speedy process. "We're going to be doing this for the next five years," she said. "We absolutely have to make sure our voter registration lists are up to date and accurate."

Based on the percentage of people who were registered to vote in the 2008 presidential election — a historic election with high voter interest — and the number of adults in Rhode Island who are citizens, Rhode Island would be expected to have 592,672 registered voters.

In 2014, The Journal performed an analysis using the same methodology, and found that the state had 180,000 more people on the voter rolls than should have been there. But later numbers from the Census Bureau, showing a much lower rate of registration that year, showed that the true difference was probably closer to 250,000.

That means the gap may have shrunk over the last two years.

But the numbers don't sit well with Trillo.

"If there's 189,000 people ... there's something very, very wrong going on," he said. "It could just be pure stupidity or incompetence. But it's surely going to end up in unfair elections. Guaranteed it's going to benefit the Democrats."