New Mexico comes down to provisional ballots

New Mexicans hoping to wake up this morning and find out whether Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama won New Mexico will be disappointed to learn that the contest will remain unresolved until thousands of provisional ballots are dealt with later today.

That’s the latest news on an election day (that has carried over into the next day) that was blessed with record turnout and plagued by problems.

The state Democratic Party’s Web site, which was supposed to be the official bearer of election results, hasn’t been updated since 11:56 p.m. on Tuesday and doesn’t include results from several counties, including the state’s two largest, Bernalillo and Doña Ana. It’s a good thing that Albuquerque television stations have more updated numbers.

As it stands, Clinton has a 117-vote advantage out of 131,573 ballots cast. She has 65,845 votes to Obama’s 65,728 with 98 percent of precincts reporting. There are some 16,000 provisional ballots yet to be considered – a process that will begin at 9 a.m. today.

Not all of those ballots will be counted, because some won’t be from registered Democrats who met the requirements to vote in Tuesday’s caucus. But it’s safe to say provisional ballots will determine which candidate wins New Mexico.

The winner will automatically receive nine delegates. The other 17 up for grabs on Tuesday are divided proportionately based on the vote in each congressional district.

Good news, bad news

New Mexico Democrats turned out in record numbers on Tuesday. In 2004, 105,000 cast ballots in the Democratic caucus. That’s the good news.

But there’s bad news. Some mistakes, a lack of funding and Mother Nature all led to some big problems.

In 2004, the caucus was well-funded, but other priorities this year (such as the governor’s presidential campaign) led to fundraising efforts being focused elsewhere, several Democratic Party insiders told me on Tuesday night. That made it difficult for the party to put together a sophisticated operation that would have few problems.

But the problem wasn’t only funding. State party Chair Brian Colón vastly underestimated turnout for the caucus last month, saying he expected 30,000 to 40,000 Democrats to vote on Tuesday. The party eventually prepared for 150,000 voters – distributing that many ballots to polling places and having a few thousand extras in reserve – but that didn’t prevent problems from happening.

Most glaring was the fact that there was only one polling place in Rio Rancho, the state’s third largest city. It had a population of almost 72,000 in 2006. By contrast, Las Cruces, which had a population of 86,000 in 2006, had 11 polling places. Even Las Vegas, with its population of about 15,000, had two polling places.

Thousands stood in line in Rio Rancho. By 9 p.m. those who were in the back of the line when the polls had closed two hours earlier were still waiting to vote.

Others gave up and left.

Though the lines weren’t that long anywhere else, turnout was very heavy around the state. There was a long line at Valley View Elementary in Las Cruces, where I saw two people leave without voting because they didn’t want to wait.

In addition, polling places around the state ran out of ballots. At least 20,000 emergency ballots were printed on Tuesday.

Only in New Mexico

Getting out information about the results was a similarly problematic endeavor for the state party.

To avoid influencing the people still waiting to vote in Rio Rancho, the party didn’t begin releasing results until nearly 10 p.m. But the party’s Web site wasn’t updated as often as results were being given to the Albuquerque media. That may only matter to people in Doña Ana County – the only county in the state that doesn’t get Albuquerque television – but the party’s inability to get out results through its own statewide system in a timely manner made some Democrats in the second-largest county feel like the stepchildren of the party.

The vote total for Doña Ana County – 5,330 votes for Clinton and 4,113 votes for Obama – was announced on Albuquerque television before it was announced in any way that would reach most Democratic voters in Doña Ana County.

On top of all those issues, party officials had to deal with an amazingly bad storm that dumped 33 inches of snow on parts of Northern New Mexico. It appears that higher numbers of provisional ballots were cast in areas affected by the storm.

That all added up to most of you going to sleep hours ago without knowing who won. I’m also giving up and going to sleep. We’ll sort this out later today.

Meanwhile, winners had been declared as of a couple of hours ago in every other Democratic and Republican caucus and primary – 42 in all – that was held on Tuesday. Why is it that every other state can get this done in a timely manner? Meanwhile, we’re left with the phrase uttered so often in this state:

“Only in New Mexico.”

A prior version of this posting incorrectly stated that all 26 delegates up for grabs on Tuesday would be divided proportionately based on the vote. It also had an incorrect vote total for Doña Ana County.