The Associated Press
Bernalillo County election workers finished determining which paper ballots will count in the final tally from the Nov. 2 election, then on Thursday began counting those votes.
Crews qualified about 5,400 provisional and in-lieu-of ballots and rejected about 6,600, Clerk Mary Herrera said. Workers also qualified 65 federal write-in ballots and 366 overseas ballots.
Provisional ballots are used, for example, when voters' names don't appear on the roster at a polling site. In-lieu-of ballots are used by voters who said they didn't get the absentee ballots they requested.
Herrera said ballots were rejected if voters did not sign their name exactly as it appeared on the voter rolls.
Another common reason for rejecting ballots: the would-be voters weren't registered.
Herrera noted election ballots are due Friday at the County Commission for canvassing.
"We're cutting it close," she said Thursday.
Bernalillo County crews lost about four hours of counting time Thursday when the computer system crashed, preventing results from being entered, said Jaime Diaz, administrator of the county elections bureau.
The workers continued keeping a count and began entering the data when the computer system went back into operation.
Many of the state's largest counties officially will canvass their results Friday, the deadline to finish. Among them: Dona Ana, Eddy, Sandoval, Santa Fe, Taos and Valencia.
Sandoval County Clerk Victoria Dunlap and county bureau of elections manager Eddie Gutierrez said Wednesday they didn't know if their county could complete its canvass by then.
"My staff is kind of worn down," Gutierrez said. "We need a day off. We will see what happens."
No one answered the clerk's telephones Thursday, Veterans Day holiday.
The state canvassing board will certify statewide results Nov. 23.
The state Supreme Court on Wednesday ordered more protection for voters' personal information but otherwise affirmed Republican-won procedures for reviewing provisional ballots in Sandoval and Dona Ana counties.
A three-judge panel left intact a Dona Ana County district court ruling that allowed observers to be present at the ballot review and required officials to announce why provisional ballots were accepted or rejected. The order also upheld a Sandoval County district court ruling allowing observers to immediately challenge decisions about the validity of provisional ballots.
The justices also said Sandoval County had to do more to protect voters' Social Security numbers and birth dates on the outside envelopes of provisional ballots — by not providing them to observers or by prohibiting observers from recording the information and making them sign confidentiality affidavits.
Secretary of State Rebecca Vigil-Giron, who wanted the lower court rulings overturned, said she was pleased with the privacy protections. She contended, however, that publicly announcing why ballots won't be counted violates federal election law.
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