N.M. COUNTIES CERTIFY VOTE RESULTS
Officials comply with court orders after contentious hearings
Commissioners in New Mexico’s Otero County voted 2-1 Friday to comply with a state Supreme Court order and certify primary-election results, reversing an earlier rejection of vote totals over unfounded claims that voting machines were insecure.
In an afternoon meeting, Republican County Commissioners Vickie Marquardt and Gerald Matherly voted to certify the results from the state’s June 7 primary over the objections of the third commissioner, Couy Griffin.
Griffin, the founder of Cowboys for Trump, spoke by phone from Washington, where he had been sentenced earlier Friday to 14 days in jail on one count of entering a restricted area during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
In his remarks, Griffin refused to back down from assertions that the machines were not secure or apologize for leading a charge against a normally straightforward procedural vote that caused a weeklong uproar.
“My vote to remain a no isn’t based on any evidence, it’s not based on any facts, it’s only based on my gut feeling and my own intuition, and that’s all I need,” Griffin said.
On Wednesday, New Mexico’s Supreme Court granted an emergency petition by the secretary of state demanding that the Otero commissioners do their job and approve some 7,300 votes from the primary, where races such as the county’s
only state House seat and county sheriff hung in the balance.
The state’s attorney general, Hector Balderas, had said Friday that the commissioners “must comply with the rule of law” or face legal action and potentially be removed from office.
“I don’t want to let anybody down, I know there’s a lot of people who want us to stand our ground,” Marquardt said Friday. But, she said, “I don’t think it’s worth us getting removed from our seats to do that.”
Commissioners for a second
jurisdiction, Torrance County, who had delayed certification earlier this week, voted to approve the vote totals in a contentious public hearing Friday morning.
The Republican-led commission approved the primary results after a raucous meeting in which citizens hurled insults at the board members — calling them “cowards,” “traitors to our country” and “rubber stamp puppets.” The group of about a dozen certification opponents was particularly incensed by the idea that state judges — “demons wearing
black robes,” in the words of one speaker — could tell county officials what to do.
The controversy marks the most recent challenge to the democratic process posed by supporters of former President Donald Trump who believe his repeated but unfounded claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.
The Otero commission’s Monday vote to refuse to certify results had raised fears among democracy advocates that the process of administering elections and reporting results could be disrupted
during the midterm elections in November.
By law, county commissions in New Mexico are required to approve the primary results by June 17 unless they can point to a specific problem that occurred during voting for that election. In both Otero and Torrance, residents have seemed more concerned about the overall security of the Dominion Voting Systems machines than any particular issue at their local polls.
Griffin, a stonemason and former rodeo cowboy for Disneyland Paris, has insisted that his objections are not partisan. He has explained his refusal to certify by claiming that the machines’ hardware has not been updated since 2011. (A bipartisan commission recertified the machines just last year.) He has also said that the machines, which are not linked to the Internet, could be hacked.
Trump and his acolytes have long claimed that Dominion Voting Systems machines — like those used in New Mexico — are flawed. Dominion officials have denied those allegations, filing multibillion-dollar defamation lawsuits against various figures who spread the claims.
This week, a spokesperson for Dominion, Stephanie Walstrom, said in a statement that the Otero vote “is yet another example of how lies about Dominion have damaged our company and diminished the public’s faith in elections.”
Earlier this year, the Otero commissioners hired a thirdparty audit company called EchoMail to look at their 2020 presidential election returns. The company — which was also involved in a controversial recount in Arizona — was aided by a group of volunteers calling themselves the “New Mexico Audit Force,” who went door to door attempting to verify the 2020 results.
The effort prompted a warning from state officials, with Oliver dubbing it a “vigilante audit.” Eventually the audit fell apart; a settlement agreement that EchoMail reached with the county showed that the company “found No Election Fraud as a result of their services.”