In 2004, New Mexico worst at counting votes

By JAMES W. BROSNAN
Scripps Howard News Service
December 22, 2004

- The state with the worst record for counting votes in 2004 also was the state President Bush won by the fewest ballots - New Mexico.

There were 18,997 ballots - 2.5 percent of all 615,074 votes cast - in New Mexico that indicated no choice for president or were not counted because the voter marked more than one choice, according to a Scripps Howard News Service study.

That's three times Bush's victory margin of 5,988 votes - but to change the outcome, the Democratic candidate Sen. John Kerry would have needed to collect votes at a two-to-one margin.

The New Mexico state supreme court is now mulling a request by the Green and Libertarian Party presidential candidates to order a recount. Gov. Bill Richardson and other state officials are resisting a recount unless the Greens and Libertarians put up $1.4 million in advance to pay for the cost.

Reacting to the Scripps Howard study, Rick Lass, state director for Green Party presidential candidate David Cobb, said: "I think it's highly unusual that people would go to the polls and then not vote in the most important race on the ballot. That's one of the reasons we want to have a recount."

But New Mexico Secretary of State Rebecca Vigil-Giron said, "I'm just speculating that some voters are just not concerned with the presidential race."

"We look at overvote issues," she added, commenting on voters who more than one choice. "We don't spend a lot of time on undervote issues."

Four years ago New Mexico was one of 11 states with an undervote of greater than 2 percent. After the punch-card ballot debacle in Florida, many states and counties moved to purchase new voting machines, but not New Mexico.

This year New Mexico was one of only four states with an undervote higher than 2 percent, the study showed. The others were Idaho at 2.4 percent, North Carolina at 2.3 percent and Kansas at 2.1 percent.

Small De Baca County had the highest percentage of undervotes in New Mexico at 8.9 percent. De Baca still uses paper ballots, said state director of elections Denise Lamb.

The next highest counties were McKinley (7.2 percent) and Cibola (6.5 percent). Lamb said both have high numbers of American Indians who may have been more interested in their tribal and local elections than the presidential race.

(Thomas Hargrove of Scripps Howard News Service contributed to this story.)