Published Oct 16, 2008
As county clerks gear up for an extremely high-pressure general election, a lot of eyes are turned to the big gray machines that read and count New Mexicans’ votes.
“The fact of the matter is that there’s not been a maintenance agreement in place, and there’s been no training for our technicians to do this maintenance, even though that’s what the law requires,” Santa Fe County elections chief Denise Lamb said. “That’s obviously of great concern to me.”
Lamb said two of Santa Fe County’s voting machines failed June 3, the day of the primary. Immediate replacements were on hand, since the County has 105 machines for 86 precincts, Lamb said. But the larger problem is that the state — not the counties — owns the machines and has not signed a maintenance contract with Election Systems and Software (ES&S,) the state’s primary contractor for voting infrastructure, Lamb said.
Common Cause New Mexico Executive Director Steven Robert Allen, whose organization lobbies for government transparency and accountability, said several county clerks have expressed concern to him about the maintenance gap.
Secretary of State Deputy Clerk Don Francisco Trujillo said the state has a maintenance and support contract with ES&S for software and firmware, though not for hardware — i.e., the actual voting machines.
Trujillo said for hardware, the state has an agreement with Automated Election Systems. That’s the Rio Rancho-based company subcontracted by ES&S, he said.
On election day, certified maintenance personnel from Automated Election Systems will be placed throughout the state within reasonable driving distance of every county, Trujillo said.
“The only cost to the county would be if there’s a part needed, they would need to pay for the part,” Trujillo said.
Trujillo said it’s the same support system that was in place during the primary elections in June. Furthermore, the voting machines are fairly new, and so hardware failure is not as great a concern, Trujillo said.
The state legislature mandated paper ballots for all New Mexico counties in 2006, and the current machines were first used in the 2006 general election.
Allen said there is a concern about the memory card that receives and stores each vote.
“The optical scanners themselves are actually pretty reliable,” Allen said. “The memory cards, on the other hand, have had a lot of problems.”
Lamb and Rio Arriba County Clerk Fred Vigil both said they have a back-up memory card for each voting machine in their respective counties. Lamb said it cost Santa Fe County about $9,000 to order the back-ups before the June primary.
Vigil said he is not concerned about his machines or memory cards. The primary election ran smoothly in Rio Arriba, with no machine failures or major incidents.
Prior to each machine being used by a voter, it is tested by election officials in each county. Under the watchful eyes of Democratic and Republican party representatives, officials run sample ballots through each machine to test scenarios such as a straight-party vote, a blank ballot or a vote for both presidential candidates.
“Basically you mark a deck of maybe 13 to 15 ballots with all the possible ways that people can vote, and then you test each machine with that deck of ballots,” Lamb said. “When you’re done doing that and you’re confident that everything is counting exactly the way it should be, then you seal the machine.”