Recount To Start Within A Couple Of Weeks 
   
By Deborah Baker
The Associated Press   01 December 2004
       SANTA FE   ?   Within the next couple of weeks, sheriff's deputies will be fanning out around New Mexico personally delivering notices to more than 8,000 poll workers.
    They'll be summoned to county courthouses to determine once again the outcome of the presidential race in a state where President Bush has been declared the winner by nearly 6,000 votes.
    Libertarian presidential candidate Michael Badnarik, who requested the recount along with Green Party nominee David Cobb, said Wednesday that while it wouldn't result in a win for either third-party candidate, it could determine whether votes were counted "completely and accurately."
    Badnarik said in light of a "clear bias" against third parties in terms of ballot access and participation in debates, "I don't think it's unreasonable to think there may be a bias in the counting."
    The candidates also are seeking recounts in Nevada and Ohio.
    "The purpose of the recount is to determine, hopefully once and for all, whether there is corruption in the voting process," Badnarik said in an interview.
    The date for the recount has not been set. State law requires that it begin within 10 working days of the recount request, which would make it Dec. 13 or Dec. 14.
    The secretary of state's office said it received the candidates' letters of request Monday and the required deposit for the cost of the recount Tuesday.
    While there have been narrower recounts in New Mexico   ?   in legislative races, for example   ?   elections officials weren't aware of any previous presidential recount and were trying to figure out Wednesday just what the law requires.
    "We'll be meeting with the secretary of state to determine how we are going to proceed," said Assistant Attorney General David Thomson.
    Denise Lamb, director of the state bureau of elections, said the recount process would take "an enormous amount of time" and that poll workers weren't likely to be happy about it.
    "Who wants to do this again?" said Lamb, who will leave her job at the end of the year to take a similar position with Santa Fe County.
    Lamb said there were 8,054 poll workers in the Nov. 2 election, and she joked that the prospect of being summoned to courthouses to revisit the election could prompt some of them to leave the state.
    "They'll be lined up like cordwood over at the Arizona fruit inspection station," she said.
    Under the law, precinct boards, a district judge and the county clerk must meet in county courthouses at 10 a.m. on the designated day to begin recounting and retallying emergency paper ballots and absentee ballots, and rechecking votes cast on machines.
    The recount won't, however, include scrutinizing ballots that were never counted in the first place.
    "If they weren't counted because they were rejected, I don't believe they'll be counted this time, either," Lamb said.