Serving the High Plains
Serving the High Plains
PORTALES — About 20 people united by a mistrust in how voting machines record election results gathered last Wednesday morning in a basement hallway of the Roosevelt County Courthouse.
Their mission was to scan copies of all 6,627 ballots cast by Roosevelt County voters in the 2020 election to be used for an unofficial audit of the 2020 election results. The ballots, obtained through the state’s Inspection of Public Records Act, were in plain cardboard boxes stacked to about shoulder height on one end of the hallway.
Roosevelt County Clerk Mandi Park provided oversight while the ballots were scanned.
After the scanning and copying, which took about five hours, the data on them will be processed and analyzed, according to Erin Clements, a principal with the New Mexico Audit Force, or NMAF, a nonprofit group that conducts unofficial election audits in the state.
Clements and her husband David Clements, a former law professor at New Mexico State University, lead the NMAF, generated controversy when it voluntarily conducted an audit of Otero County election results. Otero County refused a state order to certify election results, citing a mistrust of voting machine reporting.
Clements said the results of the Roosevelt County audit will be finalized “sometime in July.”
Shortly after 9 a.m. Wednesday in Portales, both sides of the courthouse’s basement hallway were lined with portable tables on which were placed clear plastic containers, high-speed document scanners and laptop computers, provided through the NMAF.
After Clements issued hands-on guidance on recording ballot counts in several ways to ensure consistency and accuracy and readying the ballots for safe return to county records. Under that guidance, the volunteers divided into teams at each of the scanners and computers to begin the process of duplicating every ballot cast in Roosevelt County in 2020.
Shonnie Standefer, a leader among the 20 predominantly Republican volunteers, said, “While I trust our county clerk and local results, I don’t trust the Dominion machines.”
Nor does she trust the voting machines produced by other manufacturers, she said, citing claims in conservative media the machines’ totals can be manipulated and votes changed after voting is completed.
Alan Carter, another volunteer, said he does not trust results that are transferred over the internet. Another volunteer nearby recommended the county return to hand-counting paper ballots.
Standefer said she contacted NMAF after learning of their involvement in Otero County, and they agreed to come to Roosevelt County free of charge to conduct an unofficial audit, though Standefer said the county’s results were very favorable to conservative candidates and “were about what we expected.”
Clements said the equipment was purchased with donations from “concerned individuals,” and that volunteers had written the programs that will analyze the Roosevelt ballot data.
“We will compare that to the data from the Dominion machines,” she said.
When asked why doubts about voting machines had never been raised before 2020 after many years of acceptance by both parties of officially recorded election returns, sometimes after recounts in close races, Standefer said Republicans and Democrats were establishment parties not previously subjected to voter fraud.
Roosevelt County Democratic Chairman Tate Turnbough said he is confident the NMAF audit will find” no fraud, no tampering and no change in the outcome” of the 2020 election in Roosevelt County.
Roosevelt County general election results showed Republican candidates carried the day in the county, receiving 69% to 73% of the vote. President Donald Trump received 69% of the vote against 27% for current President Joe Biden.
Republican Mark Ronchetti received 69% of the votes in Roosevelt County, compared with 27% for current Sen. Ben Ray Lujan, a Democrat. U.S. District 2 Rep. Yvette Harrell, Republican, took 77% of the vote in Roosevelt County on her way to beating incumbent Democrat Xochitl Torres Small.
Roosevelt County voters gave Republican Alexis Johnson 68% of the vote, but Democrat Teresa Leger Fernandez, who got only 32% of the vote in Roosevelt County, won the District 3 U.S. Representative seat.