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Tuesday, February 12, 2008
NM Caucus: 15,100 Provisional Ballots Checked
If you'd like to volunteer to help with provisional ballot qualifying at REDW in Albuquerque or donate some snacks or beverages for the volunteers, click for more info. They need all the help they can get to finalize the process before the Party's February 15th deadline for certification.
Yesterday afternoon, the Chairman of the Democratic Party of New Mexico Brian S. Colón announced that the Party made further progress with the qualification of provisional ballots. The qualification process works to assure that voters are registered and have not already cast a ballot.
“We’ve made significant progress qualifying provisional ballots,” said Chairman Colón. “Our volunteers have checked more than 15,100 provisional ballots and identified 5,466 registered Democrats—so far. At the same time, we are conducting a second search to a more extensive database to make sure that we count those provisional voters who are registered and have not already cast a ballot.”
Since the day after the caucus, over one hundred volunteers have donated over 281 shifts to help the process of verifying and counting the votes of the record Democratic turnout on February 5th.
“We remain committed to providing accurate results, as quickly as possible.” said Chairman Colón. “The outpouring of volunteer support has been critical to this effort.”
The Democratic Party of New Mexico and its volunteers will continue working approximately 16 hours per day until the election results are certified.
February 12, 2008 at 10:44 AM in 2008 Presidential Primary, Democratic Party | Permalink
Comments
I got a call tonight from Crystal at the Dem. party about 9:30 that they're done! No volunteers needed tomorrow. The results will be posted on the state party website (nmdemocrats.org) after 1 pm tomorrow.
Posted by: Michelle Meaders | Feb 12, 2008 9:59:00 PM
Michelle: I think you are mistaken. I just heard that the provisional results won't be completed until late this evening or tomorrow morning.
The info you heard may be about the canvassing of the regular and absentee ballots.
Posted by: < | Feb 13, 2008 1:58:41 PM
This is beyond ridiculous. We must demand accurate answers now and always. How can we as New Mexicans expect to be respected on a national scale when we cannot even tally a caucus 8 days after? Many apologies to hard-working volunteers, thank-God for you. You are the best of New Mexico, and very sadly our current party leaders are the worst. C'mon New Mexico, I have European friends teasing me about this fiasco for crissake. When are we going to leap into the 21st century, like the rest of our country? New Mexico is just too brilliant to have to put up with this kind of incompetence.
Posted by: Helene McNeill | Feb 13, 2008 2:43:47 PM
Folks have to remember that the issues from last Tuesday are largely separate from the counting of provisional ballots. There's no reason to be embarassed because the Party has decided to accurately (and slowly) count the provisional ballots.
The slow counting of the provisional ballots is nothing new to NM - whether the Party or the State ran the election. In both 2000 and 2006 (and I think 2004), NM was also one of the slowest if not the slowest to finalize its general election votes. In 2000 it was our Bush/Gore result and in 2006 it was our Wilson/Madrid result. The slow count is a sign of how close our elections are in this state.
If either Obama or Clinton had blown the other out of the water then this "chaos" would have ended last Wednesday and we wouldn't have worried about the provisional ballots. If you look back to the popular vote total for all of the other states that held elections on Super Duper Tuesday it was somthing like 6.5 million votes for Obama and 6.5 million votes for Clinton. What individual state most resembles that close result??? New Mexico.
With the apparently lose-lose decision to either count the provisional ballots quickly yet inaccurately or slowly and accurately which would you prefer?
Also, read Jim Belshaw's column in today's Albuquerque Journal. NM isn't the only state that had problems with its caucus.
Posted by: | Feb 13, 2008 3:53:31 PM
