Hmmmmmm . . .

When I got an email last week from the Kerry people saying the votes had been counted here, and implying that this was the end, I believed them. But look at this from the Secretary of State's website:

NM Presidential Race Results as of: 11/14/2004 9:54:01 AM

Kerry: 347,065 - 49.1%

Bush: 352,396 - 49.8%

Vote margin for Bush: 5,331 or .7%

Makes me really uncomfortable about all those provisional and other ballots Bernalillo County Clerk Mary Herrera tossed out because she couldn't determine that Jane Marie Jones and Jane M. Jones were the same person. She rejected about half of the provisional ballots and also many ballots from first-time voters whose driver's licenses didn't exactly, and I mean exactly, match the names they signed in with. I guess it doesn't help that Dem Herrera and Dem Vigil-Giron reportedly are in a cat fight. I recall that Vigil-Giron said Herrera's standards for matching names and IDs were incorrect, being too stringent.

According to the Albuquerque Tribune,

Herrera disqualified 5,796 provisional and in-lieu-of ballots, out of 11,966 such ballots cast  . . . .

And, according to Herrera, hundreds of those ballots were disqualified for errors like nonmatching signatures between voter registration forms and ballots. While Herrera said she was following the lead of the New Mexico Secretary of State's Office, she listened anew to complaints from two Democrat lawyers who had monitored the vote-counting process.

"If somebody failed to put their middle initial down, it was rejected," said Ellen Leitzer, a lawyer. "That is a violation of due process. All of those voters have been denied their right to vote, and that is a travesty."

Bernalillo County Commission Chairman Alan Armijo acknowledged the criticism of the new provisional ballot counting process.

"It was well-intentioned when it was done," Armijo said. "Certainly it's put us in a situation that's a little rough for everybody involved."

Where is the Gov. Richardson on all this? Not a peep. But it is more than a little disconcerting to ponder a situation where Dem votes may have been rejected because of a power struggle between two Dem officials. If this isn't a case of "I've got mine, I want more, and to hell with the voters," I don't know what is.

Please, somebody tell me I'm wrong about all this.