Santa Fe Democrat's Ward 47-A

Alternate route to ballot is long, winding road under House bill - SantaFeNewMexican.com

Link: Alternate route to ballot is long, winding road under House bill - SantaFeNewMexican.com.

With a superheated primary season on the horizon, some lawmakers want to give candidates another route to the ballot if they don't get enough support at their parties' conventions.

But a proposal backed by many House leaders places some serious speed bumps on that alternative route.

Candidates for statewide office or Congress could get on the ballot by collecting voters' signatures, under the proposal. But they'd have less than three weeks to do so, and the signatures would have to come from every county in the state or the congressional district.

Red, White and Blue Tag Sale - Nytimes: Maureen Dowd

Link: Red, White and Blue Tag Sale - New York Times.

When President Bush finished doing his sword dances and Arabian stallion inspections, when he finished making a speech in Abu Dhabi on the importance of freedom that fell flat, when he finished lounging in his fur-lined George of Arabia robe in the Saudi king’s tent, he came home.

Or he came to what was left of home.

My view: Give up caucus, return to primary

By Helen Laura López |

1/13/2008 - 1/13/08

The purpose of a presidential primary or caucus is to determine the number of the national delegate votes the top-tier candidates will get. The success of the 2004 New Mexico caucus was an aberration, and our national influence will not be repeated soon.

First, it is not a caucus. It is a primary election run by the Democratic Party totally separate from the Secretary of State's Office and without the security provided by that office. There is no opportunity to engage in dialogue about the candidates, other than with those standing in long lines waiting to check off one name on a ballot.

In Iowa, you meet in a candidate's room, talk among yourselves and you can move to other rooms. The Iowa caucus is not the right answer either because every vote is not equal, for reasons too complicated for this article. In New Mexico the ballots are simply cast and counted. They will cost the party maybe $250,000, where the primary does not cost the party anything.

In 2003, a state law was passed allowing parties to opt out of the primary election and hold their own presidential "caucuses," giving the party control over the date separate from the primary set by law.

The governor and party leadership wanted the early February caucus and the State Central Committee voted for it. I think what was really happening was that the Democratic National Committee and Gov. Bill Richardson wanted New Mexico to have the caucuses as part of a national strategy to drum up early national attention to Democratic candidates. I thought we should go along with the national strategy and I supported it.

Things have changed, and after managing the Taos County caucuses, I no longer agree with it as a concept.

In 2004, we were among the seven Feb. 3 caucuses after the January Iowa and New Hampshire caucuses, so our state results were meaningful in terms of the early national positioning of the candidates.

All of the candidates came repeatedly to New Mexico, and one of the nationally televised debates was held in Albuquerque. Being a county chair, that round was great fun. I met all of the candidates personally in small venues, I went to the debate and I was elected to be a delegate to the national convention in Boston. Any norteño willing to go to Santa Fe could see them too, and shake some hands. That won't happen this time. Now we are among 22 caucuses and primaries on Feb. 5 for a total of 2,075 convention votes, following the four January caucuses in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina.

New Mexico has 38 delegate votes. Compare that with California's 441, Illinois' 185, Massachusetts' 121 and New York's 280. New Mexico has less than 2 percent of the delegate votes determined that day. Conducting the caucuses is a huge organizational endeavor, and this year, a costly one. The state Democratic Party would better spend that time and money getting a president elected.

It is too late to change it for 2008, but it is not too early to rethink it and get rid of it. Start now by getting elected to the county convention and the state convention in March. That is easy, and the county chairs will be giving information on all of that. Next year, try to get on the state central committee, which is the board of directors for the state party. Check out the state Democratic Party Web site.

They have good information about the national convention process and state calendars and rules. Remember: The party is run by those who show up.

Santa Fean Helen Laura López is a disability lawyer and former two-term chairperson
of the Democratic Party of Taos County.

ES&S, election vendor used in NM, accused of deceptive business practices in Illinois

Link: Journal-Pilot Online.

Hancock County Clerk Kerry Asbridge is requesting the U.S. Department of Justice investigate Election Systems and Software Company of Omaha, Neb., Asbridge said. “Election Systems and Software has consistently engaged in deceptive business practices concerning Hancock County, Illinois. It is time for it to stop.

“Technology is supposed to cut costs and save time. Our state and federal governments have been complacent while companies like Election Systems and Software have used the technology mandates to increase county costs four fold and multiply the time required to do election tasks.”

Election Systems and Software manufactures the M-100 optical scan voting machine, and the Auto Mark handicapped voting machine. The company provides ongoing computer software support and programming services.

End of the line for Richardson - SantaFeNewMexican.com

Link: End of the line for Richardson - SantaFeNewMexican.com.

For weeks, Gov. Bill Richardson's presidential campaign tried everything in the political playbook to attract media attention.

Richardson even urged a national television reporter during a live interview to start covering his campaign.

But as reports circulated Wednesday evening that he was dropping out of the race, most people associated with the campaign preferred to talk off the record.

The Associated Press broke the story that anonymous sources close to Richardson said he will announce his withdrawal today.

"No he hasn't," the campaign's deputy campaign manager, Amanda Cooper, said shortly after the news came out. When asked whether he planned to drop out, she said, "I haven't had a discussion about it."

Editorial: Is this any way to run politics? - SantaFeNewMexican.com

Link: Editorial: Is this any way to run politics? - SantaFeNewMexican.com.

By | The New Mexican 1/5/2008 - 1/5/08 With the first of our nation's political events behind us, and with our state's premier event still to come, second-guessing is in the wind:

* About Iowa — where, after all the time and money invested by presidential candidates from both parties, so little is settled;

* About New Hampshire, whose first-in-the-nation primary election remains as quaint as it is irrelevant;

* And about New Mexico, where a new law governing parties' pre-primary conventions is doubly — and properly — under challenge.

Politicians challenge primary-ballot law

By Doug Mattson | The New Mexican

1/3/2008 - 1/4/08

A new state law that makes it harder for candidates to get on the primary ballot faces challenges on two fronts.

Santa Fe developer Don Wiviott, who is seeking the Democratic nomination in the 3rd Congressional District, filed a lawsuit Thursday in state District Court to overturn the law, which he says hurts both political newcomers and voters.

Meanwhile, state Rep. Jose Campos, D-Santa Rosa, said Thursday that he will introduce a bill that would largely restore the law to the way it was before it was changed last session, but with some modifications.

Last year, a bill that caught little attention limited a spot on the primary ballot to candidates who get at least 20 percent of the delegate vote at the state convention. It also removed a provision that let candidates get on the ballot through a signature petition.

Wiviott said the change limits ballot access to a "well-connected few. ... Elections ought to be a contest of ideas, and open and fair to everyone. We shouldn't seek to restrict debate or cut some out of the process."

Wiviott, who declined to say whom he meant by a "well-connected few," said he remains confident of gaining at least 20 percent of the delegate vote.

In a news release, he called on other candidates to join his cause. One of them, Rudy Martín, a lawyer who lives in Dixon, said he might sign onto Wiviott's lawsuit. He said the new law favors congressional candidate Ben Ray Luján, the Public Regulation Commission member who is considered the race's front-runner, and was "orchestrated" by Luján's father, House Speaker Ben Luján.

"I don't think Ben Ray is qualified to be in Congress," Martín said. "I know daddy is working really hard to get him up there. It would be sad to get him up there, where he would be a one-termer and learn he can't play ball with the big boys."

Speaker Luján said in response that the law passed the House and Senate unanimously, and well before U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici, a Republican, announced he was retiring, the event that has set off a flurry of candidacies in each of New Mexico's three congressional districts. "That's very unfortunate Mr. Martín would say that," Luján said. "Mr. Martín should get informed with the process, No. 1, and make himself responsible for checking the facts."

The speaker said he has concerns about the new law and doesn't think it was discussed sufficiently last session. But he said any change in the upcoming 30-day session faces harrowing prospects because it would need two-thirds passage in both houses and the governor's blessing to become law in time to affect the current nomination process.

Rep. Campos, who chairs the House Voters and Elections Committee, where former Chairman Edward Sandoval, D-Albuquerque, introduced the measure last year, said the intent was to limit the primary field to "serious" candidates. At the time, he said, he knew of no recent instances in which a serious candidate had trouble getting on the ballot by delegate vote. Afterward, he said, someone reminded him of U.S. Rep. Tom Udall's experience. Udall, who is running for Domenici's seat, got exactly the number of delegates he needed to make the Democratic primary ballot in 1998.

When the Legislature returns Jan. 15, Campos plans to introduce a bill that would bring back the petition option but require candidates to get signatures from each county in a given congressional district.

"It gets you back to the rural areas shaking hands and learning what the issues are and not just the metropolitan areas," Campos said. Previously, he said, "All a person had to do was hire a firm and sit out in front of a Wal-Mart and get all the signatures they need."

Campos acknowledged firms could likewise go to each county in search of signatures but said that would turn off rural voters.

Santa Fe Democratic activist Gideon Elliott said he and others recently met with Campos hoping he would seek to change the law. "Jose feels very strongly about the fact that the party bosses have been empowered, and getting to the ballot by an alternate route was an issue of concern," Elliott said.

Campos' brother, Santa Fe County Vice Chairman Ricardo Campos, said he also was at the meeting.

Both Wiviott and Martín, upon learning of Rep. Campos' proposed bill, said they would prefer the law be changed legislatively. "If Ben will do that and it will cure the situation we have now, it will be wonderful," Martín said. "I don't think it will happen."

Voting machines set for use in N.M. elections decertified by CO Secretary of State due to programming errors and lack of security

The ES&S M100 and the ES&S iVotetronic voting system, currently set for use in every precinct in New Mexico in 2008, were decertified for use in Colorado yesterday after testing by state employees and outside consultants revealed security vulnerabilities and programming errors that could cause votes to be counted incorrectly.

Below is a list of other voting machines that were decertified as well as the letter from Colorado's Secretary of State, Mike Coffman, to ES&S.

The iVotronic machine was used exclusively on election day 2004 in San Juan County, NM. The election day undervote rate in precincts with greater than 50% Native American voters was 5.8% in comparison to 2.3% election day undervote rate in Anglo majority precincts. Undervote is when an individual does not vote in the race at the top of the ticket.

In addition, Colorado also decertified Sequoia Voting Systems (CO Sequoia Decertification.pdf ) for "failure to operate in a secured state requiring passwords" and "failure to provide auditable data to detect security violations." Sequoia Voting systems were used throughout New Mexico during the 2004 election. To see exactly where, check out this link.

To learn more about irregularities in the 2004 election due to e-voting, check out this study of the 2006 elections results, published on Brad Blog.

Stay tuned for more developments on this story.

Editorial: Illegal? Yes, and hero to boot

While the illegal-immigration issue deteriorates into jingoism, with politicians who should know better raising false alarms about rape and pillage by hordes storming our southern border, a young man from the Mexican borderlands stands as a symbol of the many good people coming here in search of honest work.

Manuel Jesús Córdova Soberanes is from Magdalena, the Sonoran town an hour’s drive south of Nogales where the legendary explorer and mission-builder, Padre Francisco Eusebio Kino, is buried.

Córdova, a 26-year-old bricklayer, crossed into this country — illegally, claro — late last month. Thanksgiving day, his second on the trek, found him in the desert 50 miles or so from Tucson. There, he came across nine-year-old Christopher Buchleitner — battered, scraped and bereft of his mother, who had lost control of her van and tumbled down a mountainside to her death during a camping trip. The kid had scrambled out of the vehicle in time — but was alone in the Sonoran desert, a place that can be as treacherous in winter as in summer.

Córdova could’ve kept going. — but he didn’t. “I am a father of four children,” he said. “Por eso — for that — I stayed.”  He put his sweater on the youngster, did what he could to console him, built a fire and fed him chocolate. For 14 overnight hours they huddled out there, before hunters came across them and called for help.

The boy was flown to a hospital, met there by family. Córdova was taken into custody by the Border Patrol, and voluntarily returned to Sonora.

It quickly occurred to Arizona officialdom that there’d been a hero in their midst; Christopher might’ve died out there.

At the Nogales border crossing Dec. 4, there were ceremonies honoring him — abrazos all around, befitting long-warm relations between Arizona and Sonora, if not between Washington and Mexico City. The district’s congressman, Raúl Grijalva, is introducing legislation seeking a special visa. The bill’s chances are slim and none — but a nice try all the same.

Nothing, short of the rapidly advancing sheet of steel across crucial points in our border, or official or buttinsky private patrols, would necessarily stop Córdova from heading north again. And, in some communities across the line, he’d be welcome.
This is not the image hatemongers are peddling: They’d like us to think of ilegales as layabouts, bandits and worse spreading all manner of communcable diseases while living off the largesse of the American taxpayer. 

Not all those sneaking into this country are saints, to be sure; nor are many who enter with legal papers and bolster one mob or another once they’re here.

But this guy, we’re guessing, would be only one of many who’d’ve stopped to help someone in need. And helping hands like his have a way of reaching across borders we’re fortifying far too hastily.

The Santa Fe New Mexican

'Risking it all': Ward chairmen wield more influence as candidates vie for delegate votes - SantaFeNewMexican.com

Link: 'Risking it all': Ward chairmen wield more influence as candidates vie for delegate votes - SantaFeNewMexican.com.

Bernie Logue y Perea can't help but feel appreciated these days. Just about everywhere he goes, congressional candidates or "their people" want to talk.

He could be at a fundraiser, walking downtown or just checking his voice mail.

"They want to talk to me in the sense that my vote is something that they want," Logue y Perea said. "But they also want me to influence the people that I know, to pick up the phone and say good things about their candidate."

Logue y Perea is a ward chairman in Santa Fe, one of dozens in Northern New Mexico's Democrat-dominated 3rd Congressional District, where candidates are scrambling to replace five-term Rep. Tom Udall, a Democrat who's leaving his seat to run for the Senate.

Udall's aspirations follow a chain reaction touched off by the retirement announcement this fall of longtime U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici, a Republican. Udall and both New Mexico Republicans in the House, Heather Wilson and Steve Pearce, are abandoning their seats to run for the Senate.

"Ever since Domenici announced, the dominoes went shlooosh," said Logue y Perea, 52, whose ward includes parts of Bishops Lodge and Canyon roads. All the candidates "are risking it all," he said, "because they're never going to have this opportunity for another 25 to 30 years. Everybody wants to be that guy."

Santa Fe County, one of 15 counties in the congressional district, has 24 wards and a clear Democratic tilt. Of its 89,000 registered voters, 57,000 are Democrats, according to recent state party figures. The district leans much the same way, making the Democratic primary winner a likely shoo-in for the general election.

Ward chairmen have more influence this election because candidates can get to the state primary in June only by mustering at least 20 percent of the delegate votes in March's pre-primary. Before this election, candidates also could reach the primary by gathering enough signatures, but a rule change eliminated that option. Ward chairmen often serve as delegates, and in the small world of ground-level politics, they routinely associate with other people likely to become delegates.

"It doesn't matter how much money these candidates raise in the next 10 weeks," said Gideon Elliott, 28, a Santa Fe Democratic activist. "What matters is how many supporters they can win over. That means getting their positions out there early and organizing now. They have to be ready to win in March, when the county meetings begin."