Ideas Abound for Reforming NM Presidential Nominating Contest
By Heather Clark/
Associated Press
The day after Super Tuesday, the state Democratic Party and representatives for Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama reached an agreement about what ballots would be deemed valid for the presidential caucus.
The agreement stated that the party and campaigns believed some of the 17,000 provisional ballots cast on Feb. 5 were not completed in accordance with party guidelines issued ahead of the caucus, so they enacted amended rules to validate as many ballots as possible.
Doug Lewis, executive director of The Elections Center in Houston, said the last-minute agreement is one sign that New Mexico's caucus was not operated by experienced election professionals. The caucus was run and paid for by the state Democratic Party, who relied mostly on volunteers.
"Oh my land, they're changing it on the fly,'' said Lewis, whose nonpartisan, nonprofit organization has worked with election administrators for 15 years. "You never do that. Whatever rules you start out with, you stick with.''
The agreement is just one blip in a week of caucus troubles. On caucus day, voters waited as long as three hours to cast their ballots, polling places all over the state ran out of ballots and had to make copies and some volunteers working the polls made handwritten ballots on scraps of paper.
Observers agreed the count of provisional ballots that declared Clinton the winner by 1,709 votes was conducted fairly and accurately, but the Democrats fumbled when they released "final totals'' for regular and absentee ballots and then had to recheck the numbers before releasing the certified results.
New Mexico was the last of 22 states holding contests on Super Tuesday to declare a winner. Clinton won 73,105 votes, or nearly 49 percent, to Barack Obama's 71,396, or about 48 percent.
Kim Brace, president of the Washington, D.C.-based Election Data Services, said several states have primaries run entirely by parties. Though New Mexico's contest was called a caucus, it was run like a primary.
"It's an attempt to make it look like an election, call it caucus, but not follow any of the rules that you have for an election,'' Brace said. "That's not the way normal elections are run.''
Lewis agreed that party-run primaries are rare. Elections may look easy, but election officials prepare with extensive training, procedures written in advance and backup plans for backup plans, he said.
"This is the difference between running a party election and a public election. In a public election, you couldn't get away with some of these things,'' Lewis said. "Parties have hired local election officials to run their election because they don't want to go through what you all are seeing in New Mexico.''
State Democratic Party Chairman Brian Colon has been steadfast in portraying the caucus in a positive light. He has said the high voter turnout was an indication of two successful presidential campaigns that "lit this state on fire,'' and he has focused on the party's and campaigns' intent to be inclusive as they counted the ballots.
But other Democrats — including Gov. Bill Richardson, who first proposed the Democratic caucus, and Lt. Gov. Diane Denish — are calling for the party to look at the mistakes of this caucus and rethink how and when the state's presidential nominating contests should be held.
Denish said she thinks the party should look into the matter sooner rather than later.
"I would certainly call on the party chairman to bring about the party leaders and some of the party's hardest workers together soon while peoples' memories are fresh,'' Denish said in a telephone interview.
Several proposals for changes to New Mexico's caucus are being discussed:
_doing away with the caucus and returning to the June primary.
_working with the Republicans to have an early state-run primary.
_remaining with the early caucus, but giving the Democratic Party more support, like hiring a full-time caucus director a year ahead of the vote and a full-time, paid state party chair when the position comes up for re-election in 2009.
Colon, who did not return a phone call seeking comment Friday, said a day earlier that he had received hundreds of e-mails and phone calls "from folks who say, 'Look, whatever you do you've got to stick with an early primary. Whether it's going to be a caucus or a primary, you've got to be out in front.'''
Denish, a former state party chairwoman, said having an early, state-run presidential primary — separate from the June primary — deserved discussion, but that it would have to be a bipartisan effort with Republicans. She said she did not favor returning to the June primary to nominate presidential candidates.
"There's some thinking that having two primaries in one year is really not a bad thing because it encourages voter participation throughout the year,'' Denish said. If so, the state could have a presidential nominating contest in the spring, a June primary for congressional and legislative races and a general election in November.
Scott Darnell, a spokesman for the state GOP, said Republicans were open to talking with Democrats on a joint presidential caucus or primary system.
"It is something that obviously would be considered, but we still have a ways to go,'' he said.
Darnell confirmed the fears of Democrats who favored remaining with the state-run June primary, like the GOP chose to do. While the Democrats were focused on the caucus, the Republicans were advancing their agenda on other fronts, such as recruiting and training candidates and fundraising, he said.
"We've been able to accomplish a lot of our political goals and objectives rather than having to focus our entire party structure in managing a party election,'' he said. "We feel we made the right decision on that (remaining with the primary).''
In addition to debating whether the caucus is a good idea, Denish said the party also should look into what caused problems this time around.
"For the June primary ... and for November we want to be sure that if there are mistakes, they need to be corrected,'' she said.
For example, Denish said her office had received e-mails about names not showing up on voter registration lists that were provided by the secretary of state's office to the party. Several Democratic county chairs, particularly those in smaller counties, echoed those concerns.
"That compels the secretary of state to have a conversation with her voter file provider,'' Denish said.
James Flores, a spokesman for Secretary of State Mary Herrera, said her office provided the Democrats with the "most updated list'' on Jan. 24 or 25, some 10 or 11 days ahead of the caucus.
He said Herrera's office had not heard from the Democratic Party about any problems with the voter registration lists, but said they would act on any information they receive.
Colon, too, has said he's open to a discussion of the problems with the caucus.
"We're going to evaluate exactly what happened on February 5th and we're going to react accordingly,'' he said in the days after Super Tuesday. "We're going to come up with a plan to make sure that this never happens again.''
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