[Voterescue] From Bradblog: Equal opportunity fraud in NM caucus Tues.

Thu Feb 7 09:29:49 CST 2008

- The BRAD BLOG - http://www.bradblog.com -

Say What? - Party Official Kept Uncounted Ballox Boxes at Home Overnight
as 200 Vote Margin

Currently Seen in New Mexico's Democratic Caucus

17,000 Voters Forced to Vote on Provisional Ballots After Being Dropped
from Registration Rolls 'Maintained' by SoS and Voting Machine Company,
ES&S

Few Explanations Available Yet for Any of It, Governor Richardson 'Deeply
Disturbed' by Reports...

Posted By Brad Friedman On 6th February 2008 @ 18:31 In Election
Irregularities, Election 2008, New Mexico, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama,
Voter Registration | 17 Comments

[IMAGE]The good news: New Mexico now votes on paper ballots, since their
touch-screen debacle in the 2004 Presidential Election left Gov. Bill
Richardson with little legal choice but to move to paper.

The bad news: The huge turnout in yesterday's Democratic Primary led to
long lines, voters who found they were no longer on the registration
rolls for some still-unexplained reason, 17,000 votes had to be cast on
provisional ballots which remain uncounted today, and now it's being
reported [1] --- incredibly --- that at least three ballot boxes were
kept overnight last night, uncounted, at the home of a Democratic County
Party Chairwoman.

What makes it all worse, as if all that is not troubling enough, is that
the current razor-thin margin between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in
the caucus stands at just 217 votes out of 136 thousand ballots cast.

The governor's apologizing, the party is prevaricating, the candidates'
representatives are negotiating, and, as usual, it's the voters who are
left hanging, wondering if their voices will actually be heard...

We were were just a guest on Santa Fe's Public Radio station, KSFR,
discussing that issue and other problems around the country. We'll post
audio here when we can get it.

UPDATE: Here's that audio. We're on for the first 15 minutes or so,
followed by Susan Greenhalgh of VoterAction.org [2], speaking about Super
Tuesday problems with DREs around the country. Appx 30 mins in full.
Download MP3 [3], or listen online here...

Governor Bill Richardson has issued a statement today [4], saying "I am
deeply disturbed by the reports that problems and delays at polling
locations may have kept people from voting."

Over on Albuquerque's Public Radio station, KUNM, this afternoon, San
Miguel County Clerk Paul Maes said of the voters who showed up, only to
find they were not on the registration rolls for some reason, "We
verified most of them, and they were in our system, but for some reason
they didn’t appear on the roster for the caucus."

KUNM reported that Maes' office "got calls from whole neighborhoods of
Democrats who were on his list of eligible voters but were asked to use
provisional ballots" and that they are "not sure where the Democratic
Party got its list."

The Democratic Party in New Mexico runs its own caucus.

The report (transcript posted in full at end of this article) goes on to
suggest that the voter list comes from the Secretary of State, who
contracts out the maintenance of the voter regisration roll (again,
incredibly enough) to voting machine company ES&S.

As to the ballot boxes kept uncounted overnight at the home of a
Democratic Party Official, Democracy for New Mexico points us [5] to this
report from NM political reporter Heath Haussaman [6], who writes today:

Several sources told me the ballot boxes spent the night at the home of
Rio Arriba County Democratic Party Chair Theresa Martinez, whose
state-lawmaker husband, Sen. Richard Martinez, endorsed Hillary Clinton.
But Richard Martinez told Santa Fe New Mexican reporter Kate Nash that
the boxes actually spent the night in the homes of three polling-place
managers. He gave Nash no explanation for why the results from those
ballots weren’t reported to the state party last night and why they were
instead kept overnight in officials’ homes.

“The site managers locked them and they kept them and they took them to
my wife this morning,” Nash quoted Richard Martinez as saying.

State party officials and Theresa Martinez have not returned my calls
seeking comment.

The three ballot boxes from Rio Arriba County and a fourth from Sandoval
County account for the 2 percent of precincts that haven’t yet reported
results from Tuesday’s caucus. With about 200 votes separating Clinton
and Barack Obama, that’s huge. We’re talking about the ballots from half
the polling places in Rio Arriba County.

I want to make sure this point is emphasized: Roughly half the votes from
Rio Arriba County spent the night in the privacy of the home or homes of
one or more election officials in boxes those officials may have had the
ability to open. All the county party chair had to do last night to
report the results was make a phone call. That never happened.

Though we shouldn't, by now, be amazed by such stories, we continue to
be. It looks like quite a few folks have some 'splainin' to do in New
Mexico. Again.

We recommend Democracy for New Mexico's excellent continuing coverage [7]
for following this story.

Thanks to Election Defense Alliance's [8] Theron Horton for the
transcript from Jim William's KUNM report on the questions surrounding
the use of some 17,000 provisional ballots yesterday. That transcript
follows in full below...

Intro: Some local election officials say they’re wondering where the
Democratic Party got its list of eligible voters for yesterday’s
(Tuesday’s) presidential preference caucus. The party itself ran the
election, not the state or counties. The results of the caucus were as
tight as they probably could have been, with Senator Hillary Clinton
edging out Senator Barack Obama by 217 votes out of 136-thousand cast. As
KUNM’s Jim Williams reports, many voters showed up at the polls only to
be asked to vote on provisional ballots, because their names weren’t on
the eligible voter list.

Jim Williams: Seventeen thousand. That’s the number of provisional
ballots issued in the New Mexico Democratic presidential preference
caucus on Tuesday. Some of the reasons for that relatively high number
were likely weather, confusion over voting locations, and confusion over
just what a Democratic presidential preference caucus actually is. Some
polling locations saw Republicans and Independents, who weren’t eligible
to vote in the caucus, showing up and trying anyway. But another issue
entirely is registered Democrats who showed up and couldn’t vote on
regular ballots.

Paul Maes: We verified most of them, and they were in our system, but for
some reason they didn’t appear on the roster for the caucus.

Williams: Paul Maes is San Miguel County Clerk. He says his office got
calls from whole neighborhoods of Democrats who were on his list of
eligible voters but were asked to use provisional ballots. He says he’s
not sure where the Democratic Party got its list.

Maes: I know they didn’t get it from us. It has to be the secretary of
state’s office or ES&S, which is the
the main system is the, I guess they
contract out with ES&S to maintain voter registration.

Williams: Maes says there are just three entities that can provide voter
lists for elections
county clerks, the secretary of state’s office, and
Election Systems and Software, or ES&S.

Maes: I just don’t know where they pulled the file from, if it was from
the secretary of state or from ES&S, or even if they used an old one. But
there was a lot of discrepancies in the list that they provided to each
polling place.

Fran Hanhardt: We did have phone calls from voters who were concerned
about the registration and the way we had it in our office.

Williams: Fran Hanhardt is San Juan County Clerk.

Hanhardt: In exploring the records that we have in our office, we
determined that in fact they were registered, and should, and were
registered at the precinct where they showed up, at the consolidated
precinct where they showed up to vote, and should have been on that list.

Williams: Hanhardt says if the Democratic Party used a list that was
older than 20 days or so, that could have been the problem.

Hanhardt: Because we were making changes in voter registrations for
people who, in fact, changed their registrations the day the books
closed, which was 28 days prior to their election, so in our records
those people would have shown up on those rosters, um, but they did not
show up on the Democratic Party rosters that were presented at the
precincts.

Williams: But James Flores, spokesman for the secretary of state’s
office, says the list did come through the state’s Elections Bureau,
overseen by the secretary of state. And it is possible that Election
Systems and Software was involved with the list.

James Flores: The information compiled here at the secretary of state’s
office is the same information that each of the individual county clerks
has. We kind of serve as a, for lack of a better phrase, we serve as a
hub for all that information. The last time it was uh, information,
updated information was sent, was approximately the 24th of last month.

Williams: But Hanhardt says it concerns her that there are discrepancies
between what she has and what the state has.

Hanhardt: If my list shows a voter as being qualified as a voter, then I
take offense to the fact that when that voter shows up to vote at a
polling place, that he’s not given the opportunity to vote in a standard
measure. I, but I can’t control how they got their list. I can only
assure that voter that my records are correct, and if the list had been
printed from my records, that they would have been on that list.

Williams: Flores says the secretary of state’s office wants to hear from
county clerks who saw discrepancies in Tuesday’s Democratic caucus.

Flores: Uh, they haven’t contacted our office, we would need to find out
what they’re talking about
uh
what voters they’re talking about. I know
that if there was a just a recent change right before election time, um,
there’s a file that they call a suspense file
and what it does is that
uh, it may not have all the current information but it will still allow
the voter to vote, but it’s very likely they will have to vote
provisional. And then of course their vote would count once everything
has been verified.

Williams: San Miguel County Clerk Paul Maes says the high numbers of
provisional ballots combined with a new system of handling them this time
was likely one of the reasons for the long, slow voting lines at polling
locations around the state. So if discrepancies between voter lists led
to more provisional ballots, they may have also led to some voters
deciding the wait wasn’t worth it, which happened in polling places
across the state. The state Democratic Party hadn’t responded to requests
for comment on this story at the time of broadcast. For KUNM, I’m Jim
Williams.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Article printed from The BRAD BLOG: http://www.bradblog.com

URL to article: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=5664

URLs in this post:
[1] it's being reported:
http://www.democracyfornewmexico.com/democracy_for_new_mexico/2008/02/nm-dem-cau
cus-t.html
[2] VoterAction.org: http://www.VoterAction.org
[3] Download MP3:
http://www.bradblog.com/audio/JourneyHome_DiegoMulligan_NM_Brad_020608_Full.mp3
[4] a statement today:
http://www.democracyfornewmexico.com/democracy_for_new_mexico/2008/02/gov-richar
dson.html
[5] Democracy for New Mexico points us:
http://www.democracyfornewmexico.com/democracy_for_new_mexico/2008/02/gov-richar
dson.html
[6] this report from NM political reporter Heath Haussaman:
http://haussamen.blogspot.com/2008/02/uncounted-rio-arriba-county-ballots.html
[7] Democracy for New Mexico's excellent continuing coverage:
http://www.democracyfornewmexico.com/democracy_for_new_mexico/2008_presidential_
primary/index.html
[8] Election Defense Alliance's: http://electiondefensealliance.org/
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