Trust But Verify

It's not just for negotiations with the Russians.

When it comes to the use of tabulators in New Mexico it seems most people fall into one of two extremes. Either they are perfectly fine with the tabulators or they believe that the tabulators are used to steal the elections. In New Mexico, I am at the level of trust but verify. The verification is built into New Mexico statutes and NMACs.

Unfortunately, as far as we can tell, the verification is not currently being done in conformance with the law so we cannot be confident in the results. Here is a high level summary I wrote that describes the problem. It is a short read with links to more detailed references.

In summary, I want the New Mexico Secretary of State (SOS) to follow the NM statutes and NMACs on the post-election system check! With a non random selection of precincts to hand count it is possible that certain pre-selected precincts can be shielded from the audit. Whether this is intentional or not is irrelevant because it allows the potential for faulty tabulators to go undetected.

I know there are other potential Election Integrity issues in New Mexico (like signature validation of mail in ballots) but those are already getting a lot of attention. I think this issue needs more attention as it is essential for trust in our election results.

What do you think? Please leave your comments below.