Voters directed to wrong website

Letter from BernCo clerk adds an extra ‘s’ to URL

Election officials throughout New Mexico are actively urging voters to cast their ballots by mail for the June 2 primary to limit contact during the COVID-19 pandemic.

That includes Bernalillo County Clerk Linda Stover, who has routinely made that recommendation and did so again in a recent letter to voters about changes to precinct boundaries.

The correspondence, dated April 29, said “Due to the current COVID-19 pandemic, our office encourages voters to submit an absentee ballot application online at nmvotes.org or by contacting our office.” The problem? An extra “s.” The correct website for requesting an absentee ballot is nmvote.org.

The website cited in the April 29 letter lists many links that mention voting and ballots, but they do not lead to the New Mexico Secretary of State’s Office website, where online absentee ballot requests are accepted.

Stover’s letter did include the accurate address for berncovotes.org, an official site that guides users to the absentee ballot application.

A spokesman for the Clerk’s Office said Wednesday that he did not know how many voters had received that particular letter, but that the office plans to address it this week with a public service announcement.

“We will produce a PSA (Thursday) with a correction, and post it on our website and social media,” spokesman Floyd Vasquez said in an email to the Journal. “And we will mail a correction by postcard to the voters who received the letter.”

He said the office has issued a significant amount of correspondence to voters recently with the accurate web addresses nmvote.org and berncovotes.org.

“But out of an abundance of caution, we will notify recipients of this letter by mail,” he wrote.