Serving the High Plains
Serving the High Plains
PORTALES — A group of Roosevelt County citizens, most noting their Republican party affiliation, plan on auditing county ballots for the 2020 presidential election this week.
The matter came up during the “public requests” portion of a Roosevelt County Commission meeting.
Person after person came to the speaker’s podium at the session to tell commissioners of the lack of confidence they and their friends have in voting in New Mexico.
Speakers praised the work of Roosevelt County Clerk Mandi Park and county commissioners but not the state hierarchy.
Shawna Carter addressed the commissioners expressing her concern over the lack of voter turnout in the June 7 primary. Carter attributed the low turnout because she said she knew of “many people who would not vote again until we have voter security.”
Carter alleged New Mexico Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver had said the state’s voting machines are “not secure.”
Alex Curtas, communications director for the Secretary of State, disputed Carter’s assertion.
“No, that’s certainly false that Secretary Toulouse Oliver ever said our voting systems aren’t secure,” he stated in an email Friday. “New Mexico is nationally recognized as having some of the best run and most secure elections in the U.S. We conduct every election with 100% paper ballots, have pre-election certification and testing of all voting machines, mandatory post-election audits, and the list goes on.”
Carter urged commissioners to get rid of voting machines manufactured by the Dominion Company and go back to paper ballots as Otero County had recently done.
“We’ve lost faith in our voting system,” said Shonnie Standifer. She alleged that Dominion voting machines caused the downfall of the South American country Venezuela.
Beverly Bennett was another person who expressed a lack of confidence in Roosevelt County’s voting system.
“Our election system is broken,” Bennett said.
She went on to describe how her grown children had moved from New Mexico to Texas and still received absentee ballots from New Mexico, giving opportunity for voter fraud.
Park said the audit will happen in a room in the courthouse basement at 9 a.m. Wednesday. She added county resident Standifer submitted the Inspection of Public Records Act request to conduct the audit on behalf of Erin Clements. No organization was listed on the request.
Clements is connected to a company called EchoMail that had interest in the Otero County audit as well as the Maricopa County audit of the 2020 election in Arizona.
Park said because the county will provide the citizen auditors with paper or digital files, there is no cost to taxpayers. County personnel will be present while the citizen auditors, using their own scanner, scan images of the ballots to compare to tapes they recorded earlier.
The Quay County Sun contributed to this report.