Reply #23: ACTION ALERT: NM Voting Integrity

[dzika]

Friday, January 28, 2005

ACTION ALERT: NM Voting Integrity

Email from Holly Jacobson of New Mexico Voting Integrity passed along by Sonja Elison of NM Democratic Friends:

If you are receiving this email it is because you are part of a group of people within, over 1,000 strong, who have expressed interest in the accuracy and legitimacy of our voting system and ensuring that every vote counts as intended.

The purpose of this email is to clarify and update specific actions that are working towards that goal within New Mexico. These separate but related actions include the recount effort, election reform legislation, and a lawsuit recently filed by New Mexico voters.

It is easy for these actions to be confused with each other because there is much overlap in goals and activity surrounding them. In addition to this, inaccurate statements have been made regarding the status of the individual legal actions (recount and voters’ lawsuit). This email intends to spell out where each effort stands and what can be done to help us move towards our unified goal of more transparent, accurate, and fair elections. We will also use this as an opportunity to share a sample of some of the data analysis that has been done regarding the problems with the November 2004 vote count throughout the state.

1. Re: the Voters’ Lawsuit: A lawsuit was filed on behalf of 8 New Mexico voters on January 14, 2005. The focus and primary purpose of this action is to put in place a permanent injunction against use of the voting machines that have been linked to the most alarming problems in the 2004 general election. For specific examples of some of these problems, click here.

Named in the case as defendants are the Secretary of State Rebecca Vigil-Giron and a handful of county clerks. The plaintiffs are eight voters representing three political parties – 6 democrats, 1 green, and 1 libertarian - across multiple counties throughout the state. Since the filing many of these counties have cleared their machines while others have come up with alternatives for dealing with the upcoming school board elections such as utilizing paper ballots or reserving the machines from the most problematic precincts. Whether the machines have been cleared or not, the lawsuit has enough evidence to prove that there are major problems tied to machine type vs. voter type as well as other problems with the vote count and procedures that are detrimental to fair and accurate elections in New Mexico.


continued
http://www.democracyfornewmexico.com/democracy_for_new_mexico/2005/01/nm_voting_integ.html#more