Did We Bounce An Election?

A January 1, 2005 article by Warren Stewart of VotersUnite.org published in the Columbus Free Press takes on the problem of undervotes and phantom votes in the NM election results. Excerpts:

". . . An examination of the New Mexico canvass report of the November 2 election suggests that the state might be running the risk of bouncing an election.

The canvass report (available as a pdf from the NM Secretary of State's website ) is the official record of the election results . . With so much at stake, one would expect the canvass report to be a lot cleaner than my checkbook. That is not the case.

Much has been made of New Mexico's dubious honor of leading the nation in undervote percentage . . . Secretary of State Vigil-Giron seems surprisingly unconcerned about undervotes commenting recently that she doesn't "spend a lot of time on undervote issues, I'm just speculating that some voters are just not concerned with the presidential race." Does it really seem possible that 17,095 people (almost 1 in 20) felt compelled stand in line on Election Day in order to cast no vote for president?  Did 1,664 people actually bother to cast their non-vote early and another 2,325 express their lack of opinion by absentee ballot?  It seems just as likely that some of those undervotes represent votes that were not counted by the machines - and we will never know about how those votes might have affected the outcome.

Had she chosen to spend a little more time on undervote issues she might have noticed the curious fact that 85% of these apathetic voters chose to express their lack of concern on electronic voting machines - the ones without a paper trail. She also might have noticed that the undervote rate is roughly the same in the congressional and judicial races on the ballot, suggesting the possibility that entire ballots may have been blank rather than just the presidential selections. How do we know these machines did not lose entire ballots, as paperless voting machines have been shown to do in other elections?

As for phantom votes, the Secretary of State maintains they are simply "not possible."   Much as I would like to agree with her, the canvass report suggests that there do seem to be phantoms residing in New Mexico - in almost half the counties.  In fact, 228 phantoms seem to be in Dona Ana County precinct 106 where 107 absentee ballots somehow recorded 325 presidential votes.  Bernalillo County Precinct 558, 141 phantoms voted early, while in Precinct 14, 114 phantoms waited until Election Day.  In all there are 2,087 phantom votes in this state where the margin of victory, according to the same canvass report where all these phantom votes are hiding, was 5,988. If these phantom votes were ignored what else was ignored?
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A report prepared by Ellen Theisen and Warren Stewart in support of the Green/Libertarian New Mexico recount effort along with a comprehensive database on the 2004 New Mexico election can be downloaded at VotersUnite.org.