Bernalillo County officials talk election process vs conspiracy theories

They work up to 17 hours a day, often past their bedtime. Many could tell you where they were when the news broke that Nixon resigned. They are your quietest neighbors, grade-school teachers and Walmart greeters.

And hundreds of them are entrusted, cycle after cycle, with running the elections in Bernalillo County.

“The citizens run the election,” Deputy County Clerk Jamie Diaz told the Journal. “... We train them to follow the rules, to issue the ballots correctly, to do what they have to do — but it’s really the citizens that run the election.”

And what those citizens are paid for their service, Bureau of Elections Administrator Nathan Jaramillo said, doesn’t measure up to “the dedication, hard work and determination that they give to Bernalillo County.”

County Clerk Linda Stover, a jovial lady who’s not one to hold in a zinger, added: “And the BS they put up with.”

Stover, Diaz and Jaramillo recently sat down with the Journal to talk about the voting process, from ballot to certification, what rules are in place and how they address unfounded criticisms of fraud.

Diaz said they invite election deniers and anyone curious about the process to get involved: “If you have any question, come to work as a poll official; be part of the process, so you can see exactly what happened.”

He said one such doubtful bunch, after working a cycle, told Stover’s staff they had been wrong to question it: “We didn’t know all these processes were in place.”

Rumor vs. reality

Diaz started working elections in 1985 when voting machines were akin to a circuit breaker — metal behemoths with a gaggle of levers and knobs. He watched the technology advance, to the all-electronic Danaher Shouptronic and then ExpressVote paper ballot system.

From the controversy of the “hanging chads” in the 2000 election to current conspiracy theories, Diaz said there have been doubters and deniers since voting systems went electronic. He parroted the hypocrisy of hearing their gripes at the ballot box: “I don’t trust it, but I’m here voting anyway.”

Diaz said social media has made conspiracies easier to gobble up for the masses.

Some who followed along in the last election paid a hefty price.

“There was some small town that said something about Dominion machines that went viral and one party picked it up, and one news agency paid a billion dollars for lying,” Diaz said, referring to Fox News.

He said the Democracy Suite line of voting machines used by the county, made by Dominion Voting Systems Corp., work identically to the other 70-plus devices certified by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC).

Diaz said each machine is a standalone device and, despite what some believe, is not connected to another machine or some larger network and cannot be programmed. Each device has a card inside that stores the ballot information and those cards — once brought to the warehouse and deemed secure — are transferred to a computer that compiles results.

Diaz said the county, like all others, has to use EAC-approved voting systems.

“Nobody can just make a system — like, Sandia (National Labs) guys can’t get together and make a system and Linda (Stover) says, ‘Yeah, we’ll use it,’” he said. “We would all be going to jail.”

Diaz said they even catered to theorists when rumors swirled in 2020 that using a black marker, like those handed out at sites, allowed the machine to change your vote. He said Stover put blue markers at all the polling places.

“There were people that came in and said, ‘I don’t want to use a black marker.’ Well, we have a blue one,” Diaz said. “A handful of counties in New Mexico got caught with that. They called us (and said), ‘Where’d you get the blue one?’ Same place you bought the black one.”

‘You only get to vote once’

While county officials handle the big-picture stuff, it’s people like you — or maybe an older version of you — on the front lines. Poll workers must be registered voters and cannot be law enforcement, a political candidate or related to a candidate.

This year, there were 950 workers for the general election.

On Election Day, poll workers filed into their assigned voting site at 6 a.m., an hour before the doors opened. Some wouldn’t leave until 11 p.m. or later.

For their work, they will be paid a flat rate of $300 to $400. The workers are paid $13.50 to $16 hourly for the weeks of early voting.

The group includes a “presiding judge” who runs that location and is chosen based on previous experience, and each cycle undergoes an intensive four-hour training that includes a dry run.

Jaramillo said the workers and judge often form cliques and will stick together year after year. He said the groups are composed of different political parties to strive for a “party balance” at each site.

“Everyone’s doing it because they care. And that’s the key component I want to get out there to people,” he said. “This is done through a lot of pride, passion, hard work and education from everybody involved.”

When someone comes in to vote in person or turn in an absentee ballot, their name is crossed off in the database. Plain and simple.

“You only get to vote once, regardless of what they say,” Stover said with a chuckle.

If there’s any doubt, residents can confirm their vote has been cast on the Secretary of State’s voter portal.

If anyone mismarks a ballot or, for some reason, needs to be issued another, the original “spoiled” ballot is kept in a secured box. Provisional ballots, issued to people who still have to confirm their eligibility to vote, are stored in a separate secured box.

At the end of Election Day, Jaramillo said poll workers will ensure the number of ballots issued matches the number tabulated at the site. After they ensure nothing is amiss, one worker takes the machines’ data cards, and the presiding judge takes the paper ballots, which are locked up, to a nondescript warehouse in the South Valley.

At the warehouse, each data card will be put into an “air gap” computer, which is disconnected from any network or Wi-Fi, as a precaution to be sure the cards haven’t been compromised. Then the cards will be transferred to a computer that compiles the results.