New Mexico has a brand-new voting system featuring new voting machines in every polling place in the state ready for Tuesday's election.

What could possibly go wrong?

With unfamiliar technology and a political atmosphere that lends itself to suspicion from all sides, should citizens be worried whether their vote will count?

In response to concerns by liberal citizen-activist groups about electronic voting machines following the 2004 presidential election, Gov. Bill Richardson helped convince the state Legislature to approve a plan to establish a uniform statewide system of voting. Under the new system, every county would use paper-ballot machines, with voters marking their ballots by hand. The ballots are then read by an electronic optic-scanning device. Previously, several different types of voting machines were used around the state because each of the 33 counties had purchased its own machines.

The move to paper ballots, which cost an estimated $20 million, was applauded by the activist groups, some of whom believed the Republicans had stolen the last presidential election from John Kerry.

"It's by far the most trustworthy system available today," Robert Stearns, a board member of Verified Voting New Mexico, said of the new voting machines. "It has a paper trail that can be easily audited."

However, some Republicans have expressed outright pessimism over the new system.

Last week The Associated Press quoted Republican lawyer Pat Rogers of Albuquerque saying paper ballots can be manipulated through "low-tech fraud." For example, unscrupulous county clerk employees could mark in empty ovals on the ballots, Rogers said.

"This Election Day promises to be a disaster," Albuquerque conservative Mario Burgos wrote on his blog Friday. He told of a friend who said he waited two hours to vote early in Albuquerque last week.

"I strongly recommend that you get out there and vote early because the lines you see today are nothing like the lines you're going to see on Election Day," Burgos wrote. (Early voting ended Saturday in New Mexico. This reporter voted at the county fairgrounds on Saturday. The whole process took about 25 minutes.)

Asked Friday whether she thinks the election will run smoothly, Denise Lamb -- director of Santa Fe County's Election Bureau -- said, "I'm eternally optimistic about elections." There was just a hint of sardonic tone in her voice.

Lamb, a former state election director, was not an advocate of junking the old electronic voting machines in favor of the paper-ballot system.

She said the paper ballots do take longer to fill out than the old electronic touch-screen machines.

"People spend a little more time in the booth," she said. "If you mark it wrong, the machine will reject it, and you'll be given a new ballot."

But this did not present a big problem during early voting in Santa Fe, she said.

As of Thursday night, 9,470 people had voted early at the county's two early voting locations, Lamb said. She estimated about 11,000 had voted by absentee ballot in Santa Fe County.

In 2004, 60 percent of those who voted in New Mexico had done so by early or absentee voting, Lamb said.

The move for paper ballots

Only days after the 2004 election -- in which President Bush won New Mexico's electoral votes by less than 1 percentage point -- journalist/activist Greg Palast created an Internet uproar when he published an article claiming Kerry actually won the popular vote in this state and Ohio.

Palast argued that Kerry was robbed due to ballot "spoilage" -- ballots from old punch card machines that were unreadable and provisional ballots that were cast but never counted.

"Hispanic voters in the Enchanted State, who voted more than 2-to-1 for Kerry, are five times as likely to have their vote spoil as a white voter," Palast wrote. Had those votes been counted, Kerry would have won, he argued.

Palast's contentions about the election being stolen were challenged by writer Farhad Manjoo in the liberal online magazine Salon.com.

In a 2005 interview with this paper, Palast said New Mexico had an extremely high "undervote" -- ballots that were cast but showed no choice for president -- and that a disproportionate number of "undervotes tended to be in high Hispanic or American Indian precincts."

The statewide undervote rate was 2.45 percent. According to a study for a national organization advocating a recount, Indian precincts in New Mexico had an undervote rate of 6.7 percent, while Hispanic precincts had a 3.5 percent undervote rate.

The Scripps-Howard News Service conducted a study after that election that showed New Mexico was one of only four states with an undervote of more than 2 percent in 2004.

New Mexico election officials argued at the time that large "undervote" numbers are typical for the state.

Richardson in 2004 fought against the state conducting a recount -- much to the ire of groups such as Verified Voting New Mexico. However, this year the governor became the darling of the voting-reform activists when he came out in favor of the paper-ballot system.

The state bought about 3,500 machines called 95 Automark vote recorders manufactured by the Nebraska-based Elections Systems and Software.

Old voting machines such as the ones in Santa Fe are sitting in storage, Lamb said.

Counties around the state still owe about $3.5 million for voting machines purchased that can no longer be used, she said. If the state Legislature doesn't agree next year to pay this off, the various counties will be stuck with this debt.

Though the state paid for new machines, there were hidden expenses for the county, Lamb said. These include overtime for county employees who have to deliver and set up the new optic scanners at every polling place.

The audit squabbles

In September, the Secretary of State's Office secured $200,000 to hire an independent auditor to canvass the statewide election results. "Moving to a new system, we just want to make sure everything is done correctly," a spokesman for the secretary of state said at the time. "The secretary just wants there to be transparency in this election." An independent auditor would help show voters there are "no politics involved whatsoever" in the election canvass, spokesman Ray Baray said.

But last week, the only two bidders for the contract were rejected, the office announced. Neither firm met the criteria to do the canvass.

Instead, the Secretary of State's Office plans to perform the canvass itself and hire a Santa Fe auditor named Robert Rivera -- who has worked in the past for several state agencies including the Secretary of State's Office and the Attorney General's Office -- to double-check the results.

This decision immediately was blasted by Republicans, including U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici.

"Every last voter in New Mexico must have confidence that their votes are going to count," Domenici said Wednesday. "We do not want New Mexicans, as voters, to feel disenfranchised by any closed door and secret canvassing process."

In early October, two voting-reform groups -- Verified Voting New Mexico and United Voters of New Mexico -- called for the state to undertake hand-counted audits of randomly selected paper ballots.

In a letter to Secretary Vigil-Giron, group leaders wrote, "We believe that random audits of 'paper trails' and/or paper ballots are a key element of any election. Without a random audit, any election results will be of doubtful accuracy and integrity. ... You will be a hero to thousands of New Mexicans."

However, Baray said Friday that it's not likely to happen.

"State law does not require the hand tally of ballots," he said in an e-mail to a reporter.

Actually, the Legislature did pass a law requiring such an audit. But that law doesn't go into effect until January and doesn't apply to the 2006 election.

"As the state of New Mexico has done successfully for years, our office intends to conduct a triple-audit process for this election. Remember that less than a handful of states across the country go to the extent that New Mexico does in conducting not just one or two audits, but three," Baray said.

He explained the "triple audit": "After counties audit the canvass, the state audits each county's returns through a system of duplicate returns that are forwarded directly from the precinct to the Secretary of State's Office (SOS). After the SOS's Bureau of Elections completes its audit, independent auditors contracted by the state (in this case, Robert Rivera ... who will conduct an audit of 10 percent of the precincts in each of the state's 33 counties) examines the returns."

Said Baray, "The voters of New Mexico can be assured that the Nov. 7 election results will be counted in a fair, impartial and accurate manner."

But with Republicans raising the specter of manipulation and liberal activists saying a hand-counted audit is necessary to ensure accuracy, it's likely questions about the voting process will linger long after the election.

Contact Steve Terrell at 986-3037 or sterrell@sfnewmexican.com.

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