It’s 2018. A week later, and we’re still counting ballots?

The general election was more than a week ago, and Florida is still re-counting ballots and trying to determine who prevailed in its Senate and governor’s races as the candidates raise the specter of a stolen election. Georgia’s governorship is still up for grabs in the midst of a federal lawsuit. Arizona’s southern Senate seat was barely decided this week.

Closer to home, we had an election glitch of our own with the 2nd Congressional District contest. Republican Yvette Herrell was thought to have prevailed on Election Night — and even gave a victory speech after several media outlets, including the Journal, called the race for her. But that lead disappeared when the results of some 8,000 Doña Ana County absentee ballots were added in roughly 24 hours after polls closed. And while Democrat Xochitl Torres Small, a Las Cruces water lawyer, emerged victorious, Herrell has refused to concede and in fact moved to have the ballots impounded this week.

The back-and-forth in each of these races makes for riveting television, but it undermines the public’s confidence in our election systems that, especially in the digital age of 2018, is unwarranted and unacceptable.

The idea that we’re once again waiting for results from a Florida election is absurd. Who could forget the hanging chads debacle that played out there in 2000 with the presidential election hanging in the balance? Only this time, we’re hearing about illegal emailed ballots, 22 rejected absentee ballots that were mistakenly counted and mixed in with legitimate ballots, requested mail ballots that never arrived or arrived too late for voters to use, and filled-out ballots that appear to have been delivered to election offices late. In New Mexico, the Secretary of State’s Office finally alerted the media to uncounted absentee ballots in Democrat-heavy Doña Ana County after 1 a.m. the morning after the election.

For all the issues and delays, The Associated Press reports that bipartisan experts agree voter fraud is a rare phenomenon across the U.S. Nevertheless, President Trump can’t help but throw fuel on the fire and make unsubstantiated claims that unethical behavior and fraud have taken place — when the more likely culprit is incompetence.

As with Florida, the Doña Ana County Clerk’s office has had more than its share of election debacles over the years, everything from ballots surfacing in a locked bathroom to miscalculated absentee votes. Given that history, Doña Ana County Clerk Amanda López Haskin and New Mexico’s Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver should have done more to avoid any glitches.

Officials are blaming a combination of factors for the delay in counting the 8,000 absentee votes, including a shortage of poll workers, understaffing in the Clerk’s Office and an unusually high number of absentee ballots. And the previous county clerk resigned abruptly Aug. 29, with López Haskin appointed less than a month before absentee voting started.

New Mexico’s top election official, Toulouse Oliver, has pledged to encourage Doña Ana County to begin processing absentee ballots earlier in the next election cycle and to hire more poll workers.

It’s too bad Toulouse Oliver, who ran Bernalillo County’s elections smoothly for years, didn’t think to send more election help to Doña Ana County in time to ensure the same there this year. It was common knowledge this would be a close race in the national spotlight, and Toulouse Oliver should have known a brand new clerk was in charge in Doña Ana County. But hindsight is 20/20.

Now, the over-heated rhetoric needs to be in the rear-view mirror. It’s time for all involved to solidify these midterm results and ensure that everyone learns from the too-numerous mistakes so we’re not experiencing déjà vu two — or yet another 20 — years from now. Because no matter their political party, all of those who take the time to vote deserve to have faith that their ballots are being counted properly and promptly.