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With nothing left but the canvassing for official 2012 primary election totals, there are several unofficial results that fall into the “Only in New Mexico” category:
♦ In an updated system designed to cater to the Metro-area voter, 69 convenient drop-in centers were open on Election Day (16 of them since mid-May) and all were equipped to print any voter’s ballot on demand. Yet only 23 percent of eligible voters in the state’s most populous county even bothered to cast a ballot. Statewide, turnout was around an abysmal 24 percent. ♦ State Sen. Eric Griego raised more than $850,000 to lose the 1st Congressional District Democratic nomination. No, it’s not a Phil Maloof-size pot of cash (the well-to-do Maloof mostly self-financed his $7 million run for the seat in 1998 but lost to Republican Heather Wilson in the special and general elections), but it’s still a chunk of change down the drain in an economically challenged state. And that doesn’t count a bunch of third-party money spent on his behalf. By comparison, winner Michelle Lujan Grisham raised just under, and former Mayor Martin Chávez raised just over, $600K. ♦ More than 1,400 Bernalillo County residents — 1,492 to be exact — saw fit to try to keep Michael Wiener on the County Commission despite a scandal-plagued first-term that started with panhandling county employees for donations to retire campaign debt; continued with a racist joke about prison rape, signing off an email as commissioner Rodney King and a sexual harassment investigation; and peaked with national coverage of a visit to what could charitably be called an “entertainment” district in the Philippines. Yes, challenger Lonnie Talbert handily defeated Wiener with 7,603 votes, but the fact that in 2012 anyone would cast a ballot for a man who repeats ad nauseum a “joke” about a woman being attacked by a gang of men in Central Park is telling. ♦ It took Bernalillo County Clerk Maggie Toulouse Oliver and company almost six hours to tabulate 40,000 Election Day votes. By comparison, Wisconsin had a lock on its 2.5 million ballots and could call the high-turnout statewide gubernatorial recall election in favor of Gov. Scott Walker just one hour and 19 minutes after the polls closed. That’s even though exit polling had the race too close to call when the polls closed. Just before midnight in New Mexico, Toulouse Oliver still had about 17 voting centers left to tally. The official explanation is that the new “voting center” system takes longer because voting machines have to process all kinds of ballot combinations rather than just one per precinct. That rings a little hollow in a world where fans can cast almost instantaneous ballots for wanna-be pop stars and ballroom dancers. On the other hand, Rio Arriba County didn’t get its count of 42 precincts with fewer than 10,000 votes total up on the Secretary of State’s website until almost 11 a.m. Wednesday. Same for De Baca County’s four precincts with double- and triple-digit vote tallies. By that pathetic standard, Toulouse Oliver is way ahead of the game. ♦ Almost 240,000 New Mexicans who declined to pledge allegiance to Democratic or Republican ideology when they registered to vote were disenfranchised Tuesday. New Mexico’s closed primary system keeps one out of five voters home every primary Election Day. Nationally, a Pew Research Center poll released this week shows an unprecedented 38 percent of adults have rejected both parties and call themselves independents. When turnout is as low as it was Tuesday in New Mexico, giving everyone a voice — not to mention ensuring they are informed on the issues, know the role of big special-interest donations, and get their ballots tabulated efficiently — is vital to protecting the ideals of a democracy. In Bernalillo County, the primary election canvass starts Friday, which will make Tuesday night’s results official. As important as that is, so is resolving these unofficial issues. This editorial first appeared in the Albuquerque Journal. It was written by members of the editorial board and is unsigned as it represents the opinion of the newspaper rather than the writers.
