Election Reform on the House Side

Via United Voters of New Mexico:
Again now, with 20 days to go, is the time to get the message to our lawmakers about the need to add amendments to the election reform bills moving through the legislature. On TUESDAY amid a heavy agenda starting at 1:30 in Room 315, the House Consumer and Public Affairs Committee will be considering Rep. Mary Helen Garcia’s HB 1026 (which mandates VVPB but does not cover Automatic Audits) and Rep. Ed Sandoval’s HB 1063 (which has neither VVPB nor Automatic Audits, but has a better chance of passage).

Please take time today to call the HCPA Committee members and urge them to support Voter Verifiable Paper Ballots and Automatic Audits. They are:

Rep. Gale Beam of Albuquerque, 986-4844
Irvin Harrison of Gallup, 986-4464
Thomas Anderson of Albuquerque, 986-4226
Keith Gardner of Roswell, 986-4211
Joni Gutierrez of Las Cruces, 986-4234
Dianne Hamilton of Silver City, 986-4221
Al Park of Albuquerque, 986-4234

In your messages, say that only VVPBs allow voters to know their votes were registered as they intended and Automatic Audits are necessary to ensure that the electronic count is checked against the paper ballot count.

Please also phone the same message to the key election reform lawmakers: Speaker Ben Lujan of Santa Fe at 986-4782 and Rep. Ed Sandoval at 986-4840. Some Dem leaders argue that switching to VVPB-capable machines is too costly. Point out that buying more non-VVPB machines will be a waste of money and that half of NM counties already have electronic optical-scan machines that use VVPBs and it wouldn’t cost excessively to equip the rest of them with optical scan. At the Capitol, attention is paid to barrages of phone calls. Please make them! And if possible go to the Committee hearing and raise your citizen’s voice.