Democratic caucus tally is again in doubt

After announcing on Tuesday canvassed and supposedly final regular- and absentee-ballot numbers from last week’s presidential caucus, the Democratic Party of New Mexico now isn’t certain whether those numbers are accurate.

As you can read in this Associated Press article, that further calls into question the integrity of the vote. It reinforces what I wrote on Wednesday – that trained government workers should run elections.

The party’s original, uncanvassed results gave Hillary Clinton a 1,123-vote lead, 68,654 votes to Barack Obama’s 67,531. Tuesday’s announcement changed that. The party announced new and supposedly final results of 68,084 votes for Clinton and 67,010 votes for Obama, giving Clinton a 1,074-vote lead.

But, as the Associated Press pointed out, the party’s canvassed statewide totals didn’t match its county-by-county totals. The county-by-county totals, according to this Associated Press article, give Clinton a 1,121-vote lead, 68,659 votes to Obama’s 67,538. The party is now trying to figure out what’s wrong with its count.

To top it off, none of that accounts for the more than 17,000 provisional ballots that were cast. The party is in the process of counting the more than 8,000 that were qualified. The other 9,000 won’t be counted.

The bottom line? Who knows what the real numbers are. As I’ve stated, I doubt the integrity of this vote, and I know many others who do as well, including a number of discouraged New Mexico Democrats.

For now I’m going to go with the Associated Press numbers. Hopefully we’ll get a final vote out of the party soon. It’s supposed to report final numbers by Friday.

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