Clerks in a Bind Over Voting Machines

   
   
By Deborah Baker
The Associated Press
       SANTA FE   ?   County clerks trying to prepare for Feb. 1 school board elections have been told not to clear general election voting results from machines because of a pending lawsuit.
    "I'm in a very big bind," Bernalillo County Clerk Mary Herrera said Tuesday. She may ask for a court order allowing her to erase the Nov. 2 election data.
    Green and Libertarian candidates are appealing a district court ruling upholding the state canvassing board's decision to make them pay $1.4 million in advance for a statewide recount of presidential votes.
    The candidates filed a notice last week they would go to the state Court of Appeals, and the secretary of state advised clerks to hold off on clearing the machines.
    Ordinarily, clerks would have begun in December to wipe the general election data off the machines and reprogram the cartridges for the upcoming election, Herrera said.
    "We have to program those machines and we've got to get them tested and delivered by Feb. 1," said the clerk, who added that it would be too costly to buy more cartridges or rent other machines.
    Early voting begins Friday, and Herrera said she can use demonstration machines from the Nov. 2 election at the early voting sites.
    Debbie Holmes, deputy clerk for San Juan County, said there are some spare cartridges available but not enough for the 54 machines to be used at 26 polling places.
    "It does create a problem. . . . We're not quite sure how we're going to handle it," Holmes said. Early voting will be done in that county on paper ballots.
    The third party candidates' lawyer, Lowell Finley, acknowledged Tuesday that the clerks were "between a rock and a hard place" but he blamed the state canvassing board, which consists of the governor, secretary of state and chief justice of the state Supreme Court.
    Finley said he hoped the counties' dilemma would increase pressure on the board to resolve the lawsuit by agreeing to a partial recount.
    The candidates have proposed to pay in advance for a recount of 10 percent of the state's precincts, and then seek a full recount only if the results warranted it.
    "We still believe that is a reasonable solution," Finley said at a news conference.
    Under their proposal, the recount would be broader than just a retallying of votes. Voting machines would be closely examined, and so-called provisional ballots that were rejected would be reviewed to determine whether they should be counted.
    Gov. Bill Richardson, the canvassing board's chairman, said last month he opposed a partial recount. A spokesman, Billy Sparks, said Tuesday the governor hasn't altered his position.
    Recount advocates say their analysis of the canvass of the Nov. 2 election in New Mexico casts serious doubt on the accuracy of the results certified by the canvassing board.
    For example, the state had the nation's highest rate of presidential undervotes   ?   ballots with no vote for president   ?   and they disproportionately occurred among voters using push-button electronic voting machines, advocates said.
    Although 41 percent of New Mexico's voters used the push-button machines, the machines accounted for 77 percent of the undervotes, according to their analysis.
    The presidential undervote in New Mexico this year was about 2.5 percent. In the prior nine presidential elections, it has ranged from 1.5 percent to 4.5 percent; in five of those years, it exceeded 2.5 percent.
    Recount advocates say the undervote rate suggests that some election equipment may have failed to record presidential votes.
    Secretary of State Rebecca Vigil-Giron disputed that, contending that there were many voters who didn't want to vote for any of the presidential candidates.