Democracy for New Mexico

Bernalillo County Clerk Announces Expanded Early In-Person Voting for Primary

From Maggie Toulouse Oliver, Bernalillo County Clerk:
Registered voters of Bernalillo County will have the opportunity to vote early at 16 different locations throughout the County in the upcoming June 3rd Primary Election. Click for (pdf).

Only those who have registered as a Democrat or as a Republican by Tuesday, May 6, 2008 can participate in this election. In order to register to vote, individuals may call the County Clerk’s office at 505-468-1291 to request a form be sent to them or they may and fill out a form in-person in the Clerk’s office at One Civic Plaza, NW, 6th Floor. The County Clerk’s office encourages individuals to fill out registration forms in person in order to expedite processing.

County Clerk Maggie Toulouse Oliver has expanded Early Voting opportunities from the statutorily mandated 12 locations to 16 locations. In addition, she has increased the average size of each location by 2000 square feet in order to accommodate more voters at each location.

“Expanding Early Voting has been a top priority for me since my appointment to this position,” said County Clerk ToulouseOliver, “The goal in selecting these sites was for most voters in the County to have access to an Early Voting site within a two mile radius of where they live.”

Early In-Person Absentee Voting begins May 6th at the County Clerk’s Office Annex in downtown Albuquerque – 620 Lomas, NW. The hours of operation for this location are as follows:

• Tuesday May 6 – Friday May 9:            8:00am – 5:00pm
• Monday May 12 – Friday May 16:         8:00am – 5:00pm
• Monday May 19 – Friday May 23:         8:00am – 5:00pm
• Monday May 26 – Friday May 30:         8:00am – 5:00pm
• Saturday May 31:                             10:00am – 6:00pm

Early In-Person Voting at satellite locations throughout the County will begin on Saturday May 17th at the following locations:

Tijeras City Hall
12 Camino Municipal - Tijeras

Paradise Hills Community Center
5901 Paradise Blvd NW

Los Ranchos Villa
6601 4th St NW Suites A,B, C

Coors Plaza
3200 Coors NW Suite A

Integrity Plaza
1512 Wyoming NE Suites F&G

Plaza Paseo Del Norte
9231 Coors NW Suite R-8

Siesta Hills Shopping Center
5407 Gibson SE

Del Norte Shopping Center
7120 Wyoming NE Suite 16

Market Center East
11110 Lomas NE Suite E-4

98th & Central Shopping Center
120 98th St NW Suite B-5

Goff Plaza
1720 Bridge SW Suite G

Daskalos Shopping Center
5339 & 5339A Menaul NE

Juan Tabo Plaza
11012 Montgomery NE

CNM – South Valley Campus
5816 Isleta Blvd., SW

University of New Mexico
Student Union Building

The hours of operation for Early in Person voting at these satellite locations are as follows:

• Saturday May 17:                           10:00am – 6:00pm
• Tuesday May 20 – Friday May 23:    12:00pm – 8:00pm
• Saturday May 24:                           10:00am – 6:00pm
• Tuesday May 27 – Friday May 30:    12:00pm – 8:00pm
• Saturday May 31:                           10:00am – 6:00pm

For more information on Early Voting for the June 3rd 2008 Primary Election, please visit the Bernalillo County Clerk’s website at https://www.bernco.gov/clerk, or contact the Clerk’s Office at (505) 468.1291 or clerk@bernco.gov.

Voting by mail-in absentee ballot begins on May 6, 2008. To request a ballot if you live in Bernalillo County, contact the Bernalillo County Clerk as noted in the previous paragraph.

For information on early in-person voting and absentee mail-in ballot voting in other counties, contact your County Clerk. Click for a listing of contact information for all County Clerks in New Mexico.

To check if you are registered to vote, visit Voter View online or call your county clerk. Click for more information on registering to vote in New Mexico.

Laura Paskus on Ballot Booth Woes

In the aftermath of our recent Democratic presidential caucus, Laura Paskus takes an indepth look at New Mexico's election system and its problems past and present in this week's Santa Fe Reporter. She tries to find an answer to the question, "Can New Mexico Run a Successful Election?"

With critical presidential, Congressional and local elections on tap this coming November, citizens and advocacy groups here and all over the nation are questioning whether we can trust the voting systems that are crucial to our democracy. What can we do to help ensure the integrity of our elections? The first step has to be to learn more about how they work.

I'm not providing any excerpts from Laura's piece because you really need to read the entire article. Comments?

Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results of 2008 Prez Election

Oops

Accuracy of NM Secretary of State's Voter List Questioned

Heather Clark of the Associated Press has written a thoughtful and comprehensive article discussing problems encountered with the voter lists used at caucus sites during New Mexico's February 5th Democratic presidential caucus. New Mexico's Secretary of State's office, along with those of many other states, contracts with ES&S, a Nebraska-based corporation, to maintain its master list of registered voters.

The Democratic Party of New Mexico used the Secretary of State's list to generate the list used at the caucus sites. According to the Party, the only changes made to the master list were the result of a merge operation conducted by TrueBallot, which added in late additions sent by three counties. The Party contracted with TrueBallot to produce the list used at the caucus sites.

As quoted in the article, reports from caucus volunteers, long-time registered voters who weren't on the caucus site list, the Mora County Clerk and others seem to point to the Secretary of State's list as a likely source of data problems. Excerpts:

In interviews with The Associated Press, several voters and volunteer poll workers pinpointed problems with the voter lists at polling places—and raised the possibility that the trouble may have originated not with the party but with the voter lists Democratic organizers were provided by the Secretary of State's office and county clerks.

In Mora County, for example, where half the voters cast provisional ballots, about 1,000 Democrats were stripped of their party affiliation in the Secretary of State's databank and so were never given to the Democratic Party for the caucus list, County Clerk Charlotte Duran said.

In one Bernalillo County polling place, last names beginning with the letter "A" were missing, said Lynn Jacobs, a volunteer poll worker at the site. In San Miguel County, voters on an entire street did not appear on the list, said Pat Leahan, director of the Las Vegas Peace and Justice Center who observed the caucus. And Caucus Director Beth Adams said caucus workers have noticed the names of some people whose addresses were rural routes or post office boxes were not included on the lists.

The names of state Auditor Hector Balderas and state District Judge William Lang—both longtime Democrats and voters—were omitted from the voter lists that were relied on during the Super Tuesday caucus, the two officials said.

A half dozen poll workers said they saw other longtime Democrats try to vote on Super Tuesday only to find their names were not on the lists.

"I had person after person, who had voted in every election, they hadn't moved in years, and were not on the lists," Jacobs said.

Since the lists were provided by Secretary of State Mary Herrera's office, any problems during the caucus could be repeated for the June primary and general election in November.

The question is: Were the problems inherent in the original lists provided by Herrera's office or did the Democrats change the data and inadvertently knock off voters' names?

... Anne Kass, a retired district judge and regular party volunteer, said nearly half those who voted by provisional ballot at the Albuquerque polling place where she worked were regular Democratic voters, who carried their voter ID cards that showed they were in the correct polling place.

"They would say, 'My spouse's name is here. My kids' names are here.' It was bizarre," Kass said.

Kass said the problems on caucus day make her worry about whether they will be repeated in later elections this year.

"I'm concerned about June and November. I'm concerned about the accuracy of elections and have been for some time now," she said.

The Response of the Secretary of State
Unfortunately, NM Secretary of State Mary Herrera and others in her office seem uninterested in determining if there are problems with the state's master list, as produced by ES&S:

A spokesman for Herrera said her office has no immediate plans to investigate reports of missing voter names and is waiting to hear from the Democratic Party about any inadequacies with the lists.

"If there are any discrepancies, it would have been after it would have been received by the Democratic Party. Let them investigate it. Let's find out what really happened," spokesman James Flores said.

The article goes on to debunk this view in regard to at least some of the errors encountered:

But Mora County's missing voter names happened before they handed over their lists to the Democrats, Duran said.

Clerks there discovered after the caucus that about 1,000 Democrats and about 100 Republican voters had been stripped of their party affiliation in the databank. So the Democrats' names were never passed to the party to be included in the caucus lists.

Duran said she contacted Election Systems & Software, which contracts with the state to manage the software, but was unable to get a guarantee that the problem would not crop up again.

"They couldn't answer me or they didn't want to," she said.

... Since 2000, the Nebraska-based company has provided the state with software, which was last updated in December, Flores said. County clerks offices are responsible for updating voter information, which, in turn, automatically updates the Secretary of State's list, he said.

"Everything that the software was supposed to have done before we handed over the list to the Democrats, we're satisfied with," Flores said.

Dem Party Investigation
Meanwhile, the Dem Party has said they will be studying how the caucus was conducted and looking further into complaints about the voter list:

The Democrats say they plan to investigate complaints about voter lists they received. Democratic Party Chairman Brian Colon and Gov. Bill Richardson have scheduled an April 25 summit in Albuquerque to discuss the caucus, and Colon and Lt. Gov. Diane Denish are talking about forming a committee to review the caucus.

"We're going to take a long-term look both at whatever happened at the caucus and whether we're going to hold a caucus and that's going to take a long time," said Josh Geise, the party's interim executive director, who started working for the party about two weeks after the caucus.

... Geise said three counties—San Juan, Santa Fe and Eddy—had late registrants that did not show up on the Secretary of State's Office lists, but were later forwarded to the party as soon as they were available.

The party then turned the lists over to TrueBallot, which it hired to help administer the caucus.

Response by TrueBallot
TrueBallot denies that anything they did in handling the master list would have created the kinds of errors found with the list at caucus sites:

The company's chief information officer, Nick Koumoutseas, said his company merged the initial Secretary of State list with the late registrants from the three counties and managed the databank.

But Koumoutseas said he does not think names were dropped from the Democrats' list during his company's management of them.

"I've been doing this for 13 years and I generally err on the side of having too many instances of voters. I would have the same name in there twice" in cases were addresses were vague or names showed different spellings, he said.

Speculation on DNC VoteBuilder Merge
The article also addresses questions as to whether there was a merge of the State's list with the DNC's VoteBuilder list that might have caused the problems:

Some poll workers and election watchdog groups have speculated that some of the problems may have come up when the state Democratic Party merged the Secretary of State's list with a VoteBuilder list of Democratic voters, which was prepared by the Democratic National Committee.

Adams said the VoteBuilder list was only used after the caucus to help validate voters who cast provisional ballots and was never merged with the Secretary of State's voter list.

Actions Needed
So what should come next? Obviously every effort should be made to determine the source of the list problems so that errors and omissions can be corrected before we vote again at our June primary and the general election in November. Furthermore, we must learn what kind of system or human errors produced the inaccuracies so that additional inaccuracies aren't produced in the coming months. And if we're to trust our election process, any investigation of the problems must be done out in the open, not behind closed doors. We can't allow any examination into the source of the flawed data to end up as just another political blame game full of deceptions and spin -- while the problems fester uncorrected.

The Secretary of State's office needs to stop the finger pointing and begin working with the Democratic Party to produce an honest assessment of what happened with the voter list and what can be done to assure it doesn't happen again in the future. The DPNM needs to reach out to the Secretary of State and begin working with them to get it done, and get it done out in the open so ALL the problems and their causes are exposed.

Paul Stokes, coordinator of United Voters of New Mexico, an electoral watchdog, said he thinks the Democrats should investigate the problems in conjunction with the Secretary of State's office.

"Clearly this needs to be investigated in a transparent way so the public can know what's going on," he said.

P.S. The reason I quoted so much of the article as published in the Las Cruces Sun-News is that the Albuquerque Journal omitted some of the most important passages when it published a version of this story today. Specifically, the Journal's truncated version omitted some of the quotes by caucus site volunteers and did not include the explanation by TrueBallot of their handling of the list and how it was merged with updates from three counties.

Anne Kass Guest Blog: The NM Caucus & Privatized Elections

This is a guest blog by political activist and retired Second Judicial District Judge Anne Kass of Albuquerque:

Enough with the headlines and lead sentences about how embarrassing the Democratic "Caucus" was on February 5th. That so many voters were made to wait in long lines was shameful, but that was the result of not enough money and volunteers to provide an adequate number of voting sites. Not having enough money is a problem, but it's not an embarrassment. In truth, we did the best we could with the limited resources we had.

As for the headlines that continued during the week proclaiming that the outcome of the "Caucus" remained unknown, get a grip -- and lose the word "winner"! The election was not about winners or losers. The election was about how to apportion New Mexico's delegates to the Democratic National Convention. New Mexico is not a winner-take-all state.

We knew the outcome of the election before we went to bed Tuesday night. The outcome was, and is, that New Mexico Democrats are roughly evenly divided between Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama, and each one of them will receive delegates from New Mexico. 

What's With the Lists?
The really important story from this event has to do with the 17,000 provisional ballots. As someone who worked with provisional ballots at one of the polling places, it appeared to me that easily half of those made to vote provisionally were regular voters, at their correct polling place. Still their names did not appear on our list. Albuquerque Journal columnist Jim Belshaw reported that Judge William F. Lang was made to vote provisionally because his name did not appear on the list at his regular polling plase. A friend who worked at another site said their list had no names beginning with the letter "A." The big, and important, question -- and news story -- is: What's with the lists?

I only recently learned that Secretary of State, Mary Herrera has privatized or outsourced voter list maintenance to ES&S. As reported on Alternet:

"James Flores, spokesman for Secretary of State Mary Herrera, a Democrat. 'There is a (voter) list and it is compiled by ES&S (Election Systems and Software).'"

I, and every Democrat I know, made it clear to Ms. Herrera, when she was asking for our votes, that privatization of our election process had to stop, which she promised she would do. Needless to say, I'm very disappointed to learn that she broke her promise and has contracted with a corporation the name of which my mind instantly associates with the words "election fraud."

See this document prepared by VotersUnite.org if you're comfortable with ES&S having its mitts in our election process.

The Democratic Party should be spending its resources tracking down each one of those 17,000 provisional voters, first, to make sure their names DO appear on the lists for November, and then to find out why their names were not on the lists, or more to the point, who exactly is responsible for their names not being on the lists. If it's ES&S, they should be investigated. Whether ES&S is or is not responsible for the faulty lists, we need to stop privatizing our election process, period.

And to those quoted in the Albuquerque Journal who had harsh words for Democratic Party officials and the volunteers who worked the "Caucus," -- such as Mr. Andrew Mook who was reported to have said, "Why must we continue to suffer these vestiges of total incompetence?" or Former Attorney General Patricia Madrid who was reported to have said the caucus was a "major embarrassment" and that the Party didn't spend enough money to fund it; or Former County Commissioner Daymon Ely who was reported to have said, "What they did is political malpractice..." I say, next election, don't just go to vote -- volunteer to work for and contribute money to the Democratic Party (as opposed to a candidate) so the Party will have the resources to prevent the shameful consequence of voters being disillusioned by long lines and defective voter lists.

Oh yes, and just in case either Senator Clinton or Senator Obama dares to complain about the "Caucus" process, it would have been much wiser if, instead of sending their many volunteers to the polling sites to watch, they had sent them to the Party to work.

This is a guest blog by Anne Kass, who posts periodically on DFNM. Guest blogs provide our readers with an opportunity to express their opinions, and may or may not represent our views. If you'd like to submit a piece for consideration as a guest blog, contact me by clicking on the Email Me link on the upper left-hand side of the page.

Public Information Meeting: 2006 Post-Election Audit Study

You can read about the audit study here. UNM Political Science Professor Lonna Atkeson will be leading the New Mexico project in collaboration with University of Utah Professor Thad Hall and California Institute of Technology Professor R. Michael Alvarez. The goal of the project is to document the proper way to conduct a post-election audit, including what to watch out for, the cost in time and resources and the various challenges associated with different ballots and voting modes. It will also examine voter intent issues and address voter education needs regarding the use of paper ballots.

PUBLIC INFORMATION MEETING
Maggie Toulouse Oliver, Bernalillo County Clerk
University of New Mexico
2006 POST-ELECTION AUDIT STUDY

Open to all those interested in learning about the
process and procedures of the upcoming
PEW Foundation-funded
audit study commencing on 2/25/08.

WEDNESDAY FEBRUARY 20, 2008, 5:30pm – 7:30 PM
Bernalillo County Clerk Voting Machine Warehouse
Bernalillo County Complex, 2400 Broadway SE Building H

For more information, please contact Robert Adams at 505.468.1207 or by email at radams@bernco.gov. Click for flyer (pdf).

Call Speaker Lujan on Clean Elections Bill

From Steven Robert Allen, Common Cause NM:
Sadly, modern campaigns are often forced to spend much more energy on raising the boatloads of money that candidates need to compete. We’ve got a chance to change that in New Mexico with Clean Elections for statewide campaigns by passing HB 564. But we need to raise our voices. We need to let Speaker Ben Lujan know that we want his continued support for Clean Elections in New Mexico.

Please call Speaker Lujan to remind him that the Clean Elections bill, HB 564, is a critical reform: (505) 986-4782.

At this crucial point, a brief and urgent phone call from enough of us will send a strong message to the Speaker of the House. Please let us know that you made the call by reporting back to us here. Let’s keep the momentum of Super Tuesday alive by pushing for a major democratic reform—public funding of our statewide campaigns. A quick call to Speaker Lujan will go a long way to keeping Clean Elections on the move. Thanks again for your help in cleaning up New Mexico politics.

(Updated) Voting: Other Ways to Find Your 2/5/08 NM Caucus Site

UPDATE 2/5/08: From Bernalillo County Clerk Maggie Toulouse Oliver:

In regard to the removal of the "Where do I Vote?" tool on the County Clerk's website:

The Bernalillo County Clerk's office is working diligently to assist the Democratic Party with today's caucus. 

In the preceding weeks we've received multiple complaints regarding the fact that the tool does not refer voters to their Caucus website.  The tool is based on our voter registration system, which only allows us to enter polling locations when we are conducting elections.  Since the state Democratic Party is conducting this election, we are not able to use the tool in the same way.  If a voter accessed the "Where do I Vote?" tool recently, it gave them information about how to vote in the September, 2007 CNM election. 

Needless to say, this was confusing to voters.

We temporarily removed the tool from our website in order to reduce the confusion.  In it's place, we put a link to the State Democratic Party website.

Voters may contact our office at 468-1291 to find out their precinct and polling location. Phones will be answered until polls close at 7 PM.
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I'm hearing that many people are having a hard time finding where to vote in the NM Democratic Presidential Preference Caucus tomorrow because Dem Party phone lines and website pages are overwhelmed at times. I also noticed the tool to find your precinct number is down or removed from the Bernalillo County Clerk's Office website, and you need your precinct number to find your caucus site. An easy solution is to the use the tool at the Obama New Mexico page. Just type in your info here. Granted, you'll get on the campaign's mailing list whether you're a supporter or not, but at this point it might be your best bet. Various alternative links are listed on the left-hand sidebar near the top of the page on DFNM.

Update: You can also go to here and look yourself up. It'll list your Precinct number next to "Polling place." Then go to the State Party site  (which seems to be working ok) and see which polling place your Precinct is assigned to. I was originally directing people to a League of Women Voters site but have since learned it doesn't alway return the right voting place for this particular election.

NM Dem Presidential Preference Caucus: Only Chance to Vote for Dem Prez Nominees

I spoke this morning with Ana Canales, who chairs the Democratic Party of Bernalillo County. She expressed concern that some Democrats seem to have misconceptions about the NM Dem Party's February 5, 2008 Presidential Preference Caucus and our later state primary election on June 3, 2008.

February 5th Dem Caucus
Just to be clear, the only opportunity for registered Democrats to vote for their favorite Dem presidential nominee is at the February 5th Caucus. The Caucus will take place at 184 polling places around the state, and is organized and paid for by the Democratic Party of New Mexico.

You will need to know your precinct number in order to find your Caucus polling place. Type in your address to determine your precinct if you live in Bernalillo County. Statewide, you can check to see if you are registered to vote and find your precinct number by using the Secretary of State's Voter View tool. Your caucus polling place may or may not be the same as the one where you usually vote in regular elections. Check here to determine the location of your February 5th caucus polling place. This page has Caucus locations for all precincts in all New Mexico counties.

Polls will be open from Noon to 7:00 PM on February 5th. There will be no early in-person voting, and the deadline is past for requesting an absentee (mail-in) ballot. So is the deadline for registering as a Dem if you've been unregistered or registered as an independent or with a party other than the Democratic Party.

June 3rd Primary
There will be no presidential nominee choices on the June 3nd Dem primary ballot. Only state reps and senate (legislative) candidates and those competing for U.S. House and Senate slots will be running to be Dem nominees in the primary this year.

On the Republican side, they'll be choosing their nominees for president, as well as those competing to get on the Repub ticket in state races and U.S. House and Senate slots. Unlike the Democratic Party, Repubs in NM have not created an early caucus here for their presidential nomination race.

All clear now?

Guild Cinema This Weekend: How Ohio Pulled It Off

HOW OHIO PULLED IT OFF
Dirs. Charla Barker, Matthew Kraus, Mariana Quiroga - 2007
JANUARY 19 and 20 (SAT & SUN): 2:00 PM, Guild Cinema, ABQ

With the 2008 election fast approaching, interest is growing in all things political, but the real story of the next election goes beyond the parties and their platforms to the very foundations of democracy. HOW OHIO PULLED IT OFF offers sobering evidence of election fraud in the United States, and highlights the potential for future abuses. On election night 2004, across the United States and the world, citizens were glued to their televisions, waiting to discover who would win the greatest power position on the planet. The presidential decision came down to one state among fifty: Ohio.

What really happened in Ohio, on that fateful day in November? HOW OHIO PULLED IT OFF chronicles the theft of the presidency, and the public outcry that followed. Infuriated by official malfeasance and partisan indifference, citizens took swift action. Multitudes protested in the streets, the voting rights movement was revitalized, and the powers-that-be were forced to pay attention. The story continues today, casting a shadow of uncertainty on the 2008 election and beyond. More info: www.guildcinema.com