Perfect storm for Doña Ana County

Increased absentee ballots, staff shortages contributed to election night confusion

New Mexico’s turbulent election season had one last oddity in store for voters last week.

Two candidates campaigning for the same congressional seat declared victory — one on Tuesday, the other on Wednesday.

And Doña Ana County was in the middle of it all.

New Mexico’s second-most populous county has a colorful history of controversial election administration.

In years past, ballots have surfaced in the strangest of places

— including a locked bathroom and the bottom of a trash bag. As the nation watched in 2000, for example, Al Gore pulled ahead of George W. Bush for New Mexico’s electoral votes after Doña Ana County officials realized they’d misread an absentee vote total by 500 votes.

But this year’s twist had a more mundane explanation.

Election workers had more than 8,000 absentee ballots to tabulate — three times more than usual — and they didn’t finish in time to post the results late Tuesday. And it wasn’t clear to the public and other election officials that absentee ballots were missing from the running tally being published online that night.

The magnitude of the uncounted ballots was revealed more broadly about 1:30 a.m. Wednesday, when the Secretary of State’s Office alerted the media.

By then, state Rep. Yvette Herrell, R-Alamogordo, had already been congratulated by the Republican Party and addressed supporters with a victory speech. A number of news outlets — the Journal included — had called the race in her favor, too, based on the results released at that time.

Nonetheless, a new picture emerged Wednesday when the absentee ballots were tabulated: Democrat Xochitl Torres Small, a water lawyer from Las Cruces, actually won the race, according to the unofficial results.

Election workers will spend about two weeks canvassing the votes before the outcome is certified. But no one seems to be expecting another change.

Herrell’s campaign hasn’t conceded and says she will wait for the final tally before commenting.

A combination of factors, officials said, led to the election night confusion — a shortage of poll workers, understaffing in the Clerk’s Office and an unusually high number of absentee ballots, among them.

The Clerk’s Office had also undergone an abrupt change in leadership just a month before absentee voting began, though officials disagree over whether that was a factor.

Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver, New Mexico’s top election official, said Friday that she will encourage Doña Ana County to begin processing absentee ballots earlier in the next election cycle and to hire more poll workers.

In the meantime, the Secretary of State’s Office is providing “onthe-ground staff support” for Doña Ana County Clerk Amanda López Askin as she and her staff work to certify the election results, Toulouse Oliver said.

“Moving forward, we will consult very closely with her and provide

any advice, support and resources she needs,” Toulouse Oliver said.

Daniel Ivey-Soto, executive director of the state county clerks affiliate, said last week’s confusion is out of character with Doña Ana County’s recent history.

“Over the past decade,” IveySoto said, “Doña Ana County has actually gone from having regular problems with elections to leading the way in the modernization of the election process. … This really goes to the importance of making sure that we provide adequate resources for elections.”

Former County Clerk Lynn Ellins earned a reputation for smooth elections, Ivey-Soto said, and his successor, Scott Krahling, appeared ready to carry on that work.

But Krahling resigned in September as the county investigated his relationship with another employee in the office. That led to the County Commission’s appointment of a new clerk, López Askin, a school mental health consultant who hadn’t worked in the Clerk’s Office before.

And the office she inherited wasn’t fully staffed, officials said.

The nationally watched race for the open 2nd Congressional District seat, meanwhile, triggered an unusual influx of absentee ballots, as the campaigns tried to “bank” votes and ensure their supporters participated in the election.

One official said it was like Lucille Ball at the chocolate factory — the ballots were coming in too fast for the staff to keep up.

State law allows counties to begin processing absentee ballots — opening envelopes and getting them ready for tabulation — on the Thursday before an election. Consequently, in many counties, absentee ballots are usually among

the first election results to be published online after polls close on election night.

But Doña Ana County didn’t immediately start processing absentee ballots on Thursday, and election workers weren’t able to finish them in time late on Election Day.

The totals shared with the public on election night, meanwhile, didn’t break out what categories of votes were included in the running tally published online. Even the secretary of state didn’t know that the absentee ballots weren’t among the totals released by Doña Ana County.

López Askin, the county clerk, said that she isn’t sure how the miscommunication happened but that she was focused on ensuring the vote count was handled with integrity, no matter how long it took.

“I’m sorry that people weren’t clear about that,” she said of the confusion over whether absentee ballots were part of Doña Ana County’s results. “I was focused on figuring out what to do next.”

It wasn’t practical, she said, for the election workers to begin processing absentee ballots on Thursday. There simply weren’t enough poll workers, López Askin said, and the ones they had were busy with early voting. The Clerk’s Office wasn’t fully staffed either, she said.

But poll workers started on the absentee ballots Sunday morning, as soon as practical, and kept it up through a 16-hour day on Tuesday, López Askin said. They went home for a break before finishing the vote count on Wednesday.

“I didn’t want any mistakes made,” López Askin said. “I wanted us to handle every single absentee ballot with the same consideration and care as the next one. … I saw the condition the (absentee-ballot workers) were in physically, and I knew it wasn’t reasonable or realistic to expect them to work through the night.”

Ten poll workers quit in the days before the election, she said, leaving the remaining workforce to handle the incredible turnout.

“The amount of work was unprecedented for this group,” she said.

López Askin said she would expand recruitment efforts before the next election.

I DIDN'T WANT ANY MISTAKES MADE. I WANTED US TO HANDLE EVERY SINGLE ABSENTEE BALLOT WITH THE SAME CONSIDERATION AND CARE AS THE NEXT ONE. AMANDA LÓPEZ ASKIN DOÑA ANA COUNTY CLERK