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More Fun with Ballot Boxes -- Now in New Mexico

By Thad Hall

So there were stolen ballot boxes in California on Tuesday and now there are reports that full ballot boxes had "sleepovers" on election night when they were full of ballots. Here is the story from New Mexico (note the italicized paragraph).

"That's going to get a full canvass," Democratic Party chairman Brian Colón said. "We're going to be as deliberative as possible." The provisionals ? ballots cast because a voter's name wasn't on a precinct list, for example, or because they didn't go to the right polling place ? made up just part of the roughly 155,000 ballots cast. The huge turnout, compared with 105,000 in the 2004 presidential caucus here ? seemed to be a blessing, and a curse. "We didn't anticipate 16,000 provisional ballots," Colón said, adding he took "full responsibility" for not having enough regular ballots. He earlier had predicted a turnout of 30,000 to 40,000.

While Colón maintained an optimistic attitude about the election, and about getting all the provisionals counted, he admitted there were some breakdowns in communication ? including in Rio Arriba County. "We just had trouble communicating with the county (chairwoman) last night," he said. Colón is referring to a situation where results from three Rio Arriba sites were not reported Tuesday night to the party's Web site because they were incomplete, only containing results for Clinton and Obama, and not for candidates who had dropped out of the race.

The ballot boxes stayed overnight with a polling site manager and were turned over to Theresa Martinez, the Rio Arriba County Party chairwoman Wednesday morning. State Sen. Richard Martinez, D-Española, Theresa's husband, said his wife got custody of the boxes Wednesday morning and then turned them over to the state party. "The site managers locked them and they kept them and they took them to my wife (Wednesday) morning," said Sen. Martinez, who has openly endorsed Clinton.

Full post as published by Election Updates on February 07, 2008 (boomark / email).