FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
FEBRUARY 1, 2005
2:53 PM
 CONTACT: Help America Recount
Holly Jacobson National Coordinator
Hollymj1@comcast.net, 206-769-7185 
  

Group Notes That New Mexico Secretary of State Vigil-Giron Misrepresents Election Recount Efforts
  

ALBUQUERQUE, NM February 1 Help America Recount, a group questioning the accuracy of the results of the Nov. 2 presidential election in New Mexico, says New Mexico Secretary of State Rebecca Vigil-Giron has not told the truth about efforts by the Green and Libertarian presidential candidates to initiate a recount.

Vigil-Giron has repeatedly publicly stated that a recount of the presidential ballots cast in New Mexico in the Nov. 2, 2004 election was not pursued due to the failure of the requesters to provide a list of the 10 percent of the precincts to recount. Help America Recount said this is not true.

?We?ve known the 140 precincts we would choose to recount if the state accepted our 10-percent compromise?, said Holly Jacobson of Help America Recount. ?We?ve known them since mid-December?.

?The Secretary?s claim that there wasn?t a 10-percent recount because we failed to provide the list of precincts is completely false,? said Jacobson. ?In our written correspondence to her, we said we would love to give her the precinct numbers if she would agree to the recount.?

Correspondence between the parties on this subject includes a Jan. 10 letter to the Attorney General?s office from attorney John Boyd, stating that the litigants were prepared to designate the 10 percent of precincts statewide that they wished to recount.

David K. Thomson, director of the Attorney General?s litigation division, responded in a Jan. 12 letter that the Secretary of State rejected the proposal for reasons having nothing to do with which precincts would be included in a ten percent recount. The letter directs the litigants to contact individual county clerks to obtain the election records requested in the original letter.

However, on Jan. 12, Vigil-Giron sent memos to county clerks telling them they were free to clear the logs of the voting machines as required by their ?statutory duty?.

Presidential candidates David Cobb of the Green Party and Michael Badnarik of the Libertarian Party filed an application for a recount with the Secretary of State as provided in the state election code on Nov. 29. Help America Recount deposited $114,000, $6,000 more than required by law, to initiate the recount. When no recount was commenced, Help America Recount filed a lawsuit on Dec. 10, 2004.

A separate lawsuit was filed on behalf of eight New Mexico voters on January 14, 2005 seeking a permanent injunction against use of the types voting machines that produced inaccurate results in the 2004 election.

An analysis of precinct results showed that a number of precincts had an unusually high undervotes count, that is, ballots with no vote for president. The analysis also showed that at the precinct level, undervote rates correlated strongly with use of paperless electronic voting machines on Election Day. In the same precincts, votes cast on paper showed minimal or no undervotes.

Members of the media are invited to review additional information on election problems in New Mexico including individual county analysis by visiting http://www.helpamericarecount.org/nm1.html .

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