By Carter Bundy
This year’s Democratic caucus is nothing new. As happened in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections and the 2006 First Congressional District race, we are simply the state that has had the closest election in
Truth is, the election is so close that, as with our elections in those three years, we’d still be counting long after Election Day no matter how the caucus had been run.
Were there mistakes? Sure. And Brian Colón has taken full responsibility. It’s been a gracious performance by a public figure in a tough situation.
The caucus was run on the cheap, and you can ask any of us who were approached to contribute to the caucus, that’s not for a lack of fundraising efforts by Colón. It’s an expensive proposition to do these things well, and New Mexico Democrats as a group simply didn’t step up.
We didn’t chip in enough money, and most of us didn’t volunteer enough (Colón did, though – his is an unpaid position). Even if we had, given the closeness of the race, there likely would still have been at least a week’s worth of canvassing and provisional-ballot qualifying and counting.
The enigma around this election is that people haven’t realized the delay is more about the closeness of the election than anything else.
Crisatunity
As with most things, the Simpsons are relevant. In one episode, Lisa says to Homer: “Did you know that the Chinese use the same word for “crisis” as they do for “opportunity?” Homer: “Yes – Crisatunity!”
With our latest close election, there’s no better time for
• First, allow Election-Day registration. No, it doesn’t cause voter fraud if it’s done right. Yes, it means having ID. Liberal and conservative states alike have done it without any problems.
• Second, adopt computer touch screens with paper printouts that are the only official ballot. It ensures no polling location ever runs out of ballots, because all you need is plain white cardstock.
The voters’ intent is respected, because the ballot is printed out for the voter, who gets to review it before putting it into an opti-scan machine. It eliminates errors from not filling in ovals sufficiently, using a non-No. 2 pencil, filling in the wrong box because of a bad ballot design, overvoting, and chads.
It frees voters to vote in any polling location in their county, in turn greatly reducing the biggest driver of provisional balloting: polling-location confusion. I have no idea where to vote each election, and I do this for a living.
• Third, create mega-polling locations and publicize the heck out of them. Using large, well-known locations in or near highly trafficked venues like malls, senior centers, sports venues, movie theaters, schools and civic buildings would ensure that virtually everyone has a chance to vote.
• Fourth, return absentee voting to its intended, limited status. A 2000 poll showed that 79 percent of married men said their wife voted the same way they did, but only 50 percent of married women said they voted the way their husband did.
On top of vote-buying, vote-tampering and other potential big problems, democracy loses when we eliminate the secret ballot in households. Beyond that, it’s a complex, administrative nightmare.
Absentee ballots should absolutely be available to our military and to those willing to sign an affidavit that they’ll be out of the county on election weekend (more on that in a moment), but otherwise should be limited.
• Fifth, don’t allow privatization of our elections systems. The private companies, all of which are owned by the GOP (or own the GOP), have screwed up everything from voter purges to computer programming all over
Bizarrely, they insist no one can see their codes, even with confidentiality agreements. Spend money to hire dedicated public servants from both parties to perfect the voter file.
• Sixth, shorten but broaden early voting. That ends the odd practice of allowing votes to be cast a month or more before the end of an election. Candidates die, drop out and change positions in the last month of a campaign.
I’d propose a four-day election weekend, Saturday through Tuesday, with fewer but larger sites, well-staffed and well-equipped. That would take care of the problems with holding an election on a weekday. It would generate buzz and turnout.
The county clerks would only have to hold a four-day election instead of having the bureaucratic nightmare of widespread, long-term absentee and early voting. By having four full days of voting, the long Tuesday crowds would largely evaporate.
It would also enable us to adequately staff large voting sites and create significant economies of scale on everything from rent to staff to machines.
Who better than
We have aggressive, innovative leadership in much of our state and local government. We’re big enough that the changes would be meaningful, and small enough to implement them.
In the last decade,
Bundy is the political and legislative director for AFSCME in