N.M. considering mail-in elections

By Kate Nash (Contact)
Wednesday, November 29, 2006

http://www.abqtrib.com/news/2006/nov/29/nm-considering-mail--elections/

Early and absentee voters

In Bernalillo County: 41,734 people voted early and 49,788 voted by absentee ballot. Combined, that's 46 percent of the ballots cast in the county.

Statewide: 132,333 people voted early and 96,011 voted by absentee ballot. Combined, that's 40.2 percent of the ballots in the state.

Source: Bernalillo County and the Secretary of State's Office

SANTA FE — In Oregon, casting a ballot is easier than visiting a drive-through coffee shop.

Since 1998, Beaver State voters have dropped their ballots in special mail receptacles or popped them in the regular mail.

Could New Mexico be next for similarly easy, and cheap, elections?

Maybe, says Secretary of State-elect Mary Herrera.

She's got mail-in elections on her to-look-into list, although not for the 2007 legislative session.

"Mail-in is a lot cheaper and you get a lot higher turnout," she said.

For the general election earlier this month, about 40 percent of the ballots statewide were cast before election day. That's a dip from the 2004 election, when 51 percent of people voted before Election Day.

In Bernalillo County, 46 percent of votes were cast early or absentee while 54 percent of voters chose their candidates Nov. 7.

The turnout statewide was more than 52 percent in this election, in which voters picked a governor, statewide officials and members of Congress. In 2002, about 53 percent of voters showed up at the polls on Election Day.

By contrast, Oregon in recent general elections has seen as high as a 90 percent voter turnout, said Connie Higgins, Curry County, Ore., elections administrator and chief deputy county clerk.

Oregon went to a mail-in system because absentee voting was extremely popular, Higgins said. About 70 percent of voters chose absentee ballots before the change in state law creating the all-mail elections.

"Voters really wanted it," she said.

The state's money-minders like it, too. Her county's 2004 election cost just $43,029, she said.

Herrera said this year's general election in Bernalillo County cost at least $1.3 million. She estimated a mail-in election would cost about $800,000, based on the cost of the last election by mail, a 2003 ballot question about whether Albuquerque's city government should be combined with Bernalillo County.

As for this year's decrease in the number of early and absentee voters, University of New Mexico political science professor Lonna Atkeson isn't surprised, given that it is an off-year.

"There were so many more groups mobilizing voters in 2004," she said.

Herrera, who starts her new job Jan. 1, also said she's looking into ways to make it easier for poll workers to count paper ballots on and after election night.

Herrera said she's considering two ideas to deal with the count in close races, something that could have helped in the dragged-out count in the 1st Congressional District race between U.S. Rep. Heather Wilson and Attorney General Patricia Madrid. It took more than a week to declare Wilson the winner by a slim margin.

One idea Herrera wants to pitch to lawmakers would create an electronic tally sheet for ballots that are rejected by the vote-reading machines.

Another proposal would allow elections officials working on close races to hand tally just the race that's in dispute, not the entire ballot.

Overall, Herrera, a Democrat, said she wants to stick to the paper ballot system New Mexico tried statewide for the first time this year.

"For it being the first time and a general election . . . overall, I'm satisfied with it."