MONITORING THE VOTE

Dems, GOP hope sending representatives to watch polls Nov. 2 will keep problems at bay

By Shea Andersen
Albuquerque Tribune Reporter  15 October 2004

Voters headed to the polls Nov. 2 will have plenty of company.

Not just other voters.

The Democratic and Republican parties will deploy hundreds of volunteers and paid workers to monitor voting action.

The poll "watchers" and "challengers" will fan out across Albuquerque, working in as many voting sites as possible.

Their goal? Preserve democracy, party leaders said.

Providing poll monitors is the latest move as the state's two biggest parties trade barbs over who is working harder to preserve the integrity of Election Day.

"If the Republicans would let the process function properly without creating hysteria, we might not feel compelled to resort to this," said Matt Farrauto, a spokesman for the New Mexico Democratic Party.

Republicans said the Democrats are merely following a well-laid plan to create charges of voter intimidation where none exists.

"It's simply amazing to me how low the Kerry campaign and the Democrat party will stoop for their political gain," said New Mexico Republican Party Chairman Allen Weh. "The New Mexico Republican Party has done nothing but support efforts to have fair and clean elections for all New Mexico voters."

Weh's ire was sparked by the partial excerpt of a Democratic National Committee manual instructing party leaders on how to deal with the Republican-led issue of voter fraud and turn it into an issue of voter suppression.

The manual was excerpted in part on the Web site drudgereport.com.

Both allegations have made news in New Mexico, as Republicans set up a steady drumbeat of voter fraud allegations aimed primarily at Democratic-leaning voter registration drives.

But Democrats, for their part, have accused Republican-affiliated voter drives of tearing up voter registration forms in Nevada and Oregon, according to news reports.

More than 100,000 new voters have been signed up in New Mexico, tipping the number of registered voters in the state to more than 1 million for the first time.

Now, the true test of just how smooth this election will go is about to come down to the polling sites themselves, as hundreds of partisan poll monitors hit the hustings.

Democrats had one training session for monitors that drew as many as 200 people, organizers said. Another session Thursday night was expected to attract more.

"Our goal is to ensure that each eligible voter has the right to vote in as smooth and effortless a way as possible," said Jack Polidori, who is leading the training for Democrats.

Republicans will hold their own such training Saturday night in Albuquerque.

Similar training by both parties is set up all across the state.

The poll monitors are legal under New Mexico state law.

According to the election code, party-appointed poll challengers and watchers, so defined in the law, can stay inside a polling place and have access to voter registration information and compare voter sign-ins. They cannot, however, interfere with the poll workers or handle ballots or voting machines.

Challengers, by state law, are allowed to file challenges to votes and have those reviewed. Watchers, by contrast, just watch, and monitor.