(Also available in purple.)
Voter disenfranchisement is a fact in New Mexico.
Although the Gubenatorial Mansion and both houses of the state legislature are comfortably controlled by Democrats, the systematic disenfranchisement that tossed New Mexico to Bush in 2004 threatens to throw the 2008 presidential election results to the Republicans as well.
Systematic voter disenfranchisement in 2004 occured in two stages. First, Governor Bill Richardson ushered a bill through the legislature establishing a February presidential “caucus” in advance of the traditional late primary. The “caucus” was actually a limited primary run by the Democratic Party rather than the state.
Richardson probably favored the “caucus” as a means of improving his own chances at the presidency by pushing New Mexico to the front of the voting pack.
While the February date insured New Mexicans a greater stake in the selection of the Democratic presidential candidate, it also subjected rugged rural mountainous counties to the risk of blizzards and impassible roads. This was probably not bemoaned by the Richardson campaign since he had lukewarm support among rural subsistance ranchers in the north where the blizzards fester.
The state Democratic Party countered the possibility that poor weather might depress voter turn-out by limiting voting hours to 12-7, and cutting back the number of polling places in each county to five or six sites. Many counties in New Mexico are larger than Connecticut. The new rules insured that rural New Mexicans would have to request time off from work to drive several hours in the snow through mountain passes to their polling place. Once there, they were forced to wait in line because of the consolidated voting venues for hours.
The voters who were excluded from the selection process for the Democratic presidential candidate were primarily low income, rural Native American and Hispanic voters. Many were angered by the deliberate effort to depress the vote and did not show up at the polls in November to support Kerry.
Even so, were it not for a second disenfranchisement in November of 2004, Kerry would probably have won New Mexico. In November of 2004, the Democratic Secretary of State (Rebecca Vigil Giron) and the Democratic Governor (Bill Richardson) employed voting machines made by Sequoia, Danaher and ES&S. Oddly, the machines systematically undercounted the votes of rural Native Americans and Hispanics at two to three times the rate that Anglo votes were undercounted.
In some Native American precincts, over 99% of the people who drove through a snowstorm to wait in line in the blowing wind at the polls, did not (according to the machines) care to cast a vote for president.
New Mexicans rebelled and brought a lawsuit against the state. Richardson withdrew the machines and was hailed nationally as a voting reform pioneer.
But the disenfranchisement has not ended. On Super Tuesday of this year, somehow, despite the fiascos caused by overcrowding and long lines at consolidated polling stations, the Democratic Party of New Mexico (which had now switched to paper ballots) again did not anticipate high turn out. Predictably, the rural north was socked by a ferocious blizzard on “caucus” day. People braved the storm to wait in line for two or three hours only to learn that the polling stations had run out of ballots.
The incompetence of the party apparatchik was again compounded by the shenanigans of the new Secretary of State, Mary Herrera, who had retained ES&S, the same company whose machines previously undercounted Hispanic and Native American votes, and allowed them to “clean up” New Mexico’s voting lists just prior to the caucus. As a result of purged lists, over 16,000 “provisional ballots” were cast. In New Mexico, it is normal for 50% or more of all provisional ballots to be discarded. A discarded provisional ballot is a lost vote. Moreover, oversight of the primary by the Democratic Party rather than the county clerks, along with the return of old fashioned paper ballots, meant that ballot boxes in some counties notorious in previous years for vote tampering, were taken home by party officials for sleepovers before being counted.
I called the Office of the Secretary of State to ask their spokesperson, James Flores, whether they plan to fix the voter rolls prior to the November election. According to Mr. Flores, the Secretary of State does not need to examine voter rolls if the public complains. “The Democrat Party has not contacted us,” he said, adding that the voters who were purged were probably members of the Green Party who would not have been allowed to vote anyway. “The Democrat Party ran the election,” stated Flores. “If they call us and say there were problems, then we need to work on it.”
Flores complained that he was fielding the same questions from reporters repeatedly. When informed that reporters were asking due to public interest, and that the Secretary of State is a public employee and must presumbably respond to the public, he repeated, “When the Democrat Party calls us and tells us there was something wrong with the list, we will investigate.”
He also stated that the current Secretary of State was not responsible for the contract with ES&S, as it had been signed under the administration of the previous Secretary, Rebecca Vigil Giron and that he had not heard any complaints from the county clerks about the caucus. However, since the caucus was run by the Democratic Party, the clerks were not involved and would have no reason to complain.
It is relatively insignificant whether the purged voter lists and subsequent failure to validate all provisional ballots threw the election to Clinton. One extra delegate at the Democratic convention is probably not an election-breaker.
The scary fact is that Secretary of State Mary Herrera’s ES&S voting lists are scheduled for deployment in the November presidential election. The rural Hispanics and Native Americans who have been systematically undercounted and purged, vote overwhelmingly Democratic. There is a strong possibility that disenfranchisement caused by faulty lists will once again throw the presidential election in New Mexico…this time to McCain.
Bill Richardson chastised the party for its incompetence after Super Tuesday. We need to pressure him into more than lip service. The voter lists must be restored.
New Mexico is not the only state relying on private companies to run its elections. Now is the time for vigilance. How well does the voting apparatus serve democracy in your state?
