Secretary of State Mary Herrera
Allegations against Mary Herrera probably won’t affect the integrity of the election because clerks handle the nuts and bolts, many say
County clerks handle the nuts and bolts of elections, so a former state elections director’s allegations of unethical behavior by Secretary of State Mary Herrera probably won’t affect the integrity of the upcoming June primary, several clerks and others say.
Still, some point out that there are a few areas in which the secretary of state directly impacts elections.
The assertion that the election will have integrity despite any problems in the Secretary of State’s Office comes from a number of county clerks and others interviewed for this article. That includes A.J. Salazar, the former state elections director who alleged two weeks ago in his resignation letter that Herrera is violating the Governmental Conduct Act and elections law.
“The county clerks are incredibly well prepared and equipped, and very professional in my opinion,” Salazar said. “I don’t think the public has anything to worry about.”
Doña Ana County Clerk Lynn Ellins agreed.
“The county clerks really run the election as a practical matter,” he said. “We count the votes, we hire the poll workers, we run the polling places, so even if all of these allegations or a significant number of them are true, I see it having very little impact on the actual operation of the election.”
Ellins cautioned that he wasn’t saying any or all of the allegations brought by Salazar are true – he’s simply saying that, even “in the worst scenario possible, we can still run the election.” He said he has focused on trying to restore the public’s faith in the election process, and he hopes “that this particular scenario doesn’t turn people into cynics.”
Allegations are ‘serious and must be investigated’
State Rep. Janice Arnold-Jones, R-Albuquerque and a member of the House Voters and Elections Committee, said Ellins is largely correct, but she still has some concerns. She pointed out that Herrera writes the rules by which clerks must operate.
And if a clerk has problems, the secretary of state might step in to take a more direct role in that county.
“There are some places that could fall down, could make it really uncomfortable,” the Republican gubernatorial candidate said.
Arnold-Jones added that she believes Salazar’s allegations are true, and she suspects that many of the problems in the Secretary of State’s Office are due to incompetence.
Lt. Gov. Diane Denish, the Democrats’ candidate for governor, said Salazar’s allegations are “serious and must be investigated.”
“The public deserves to have full confidence in our state’s election process and its officials,” Denish said.
The Attorney General’s Office is looking into the situation, though it’s not clear whether it’s conducting a full-scale investigation. The AG generally doesn’t comment on ongoing investigations.
Among Salazar’s allegations is that Herrera ordered exempt employees to collect signatures for her re-election bid at a meeting held during work hours, that she was improperly soliciting donations from contractors doing business with the office to help fund a training, and that she retaliated against him after he tried to stop those potentially illegal actions.
The integrity of voting machines
In an interview, Salazar also raised concern about a number of voting machines “being stored currently without a contract” at a private facility in Rio Rancho. He said only the company that is storing the machines and Deputy Secretary of State Don Francisco Trujillo – who he has accused of being part of the “corruption” in the Secretary of State’s Office – have any information about “the full accounting and inventory of those machines.”
The number of machines kept at the facility in Rio Rancho isn’t clear, but as Ellins pointed out, the vast majority of voting machines in New Mexico are stored by the county clerks, who are responsible for their security.
Some of the machines that are stored at the Rio Rancho facility were loaned to municipalities for elections, though Salazar said there was no designated chain of custody for the machines – which he said creates a potential for abuse.
“My concern was for chain of custody and the security and integrity of those machines,” Salazar said, adding that “only the deputy secretary – and, I would hope, the secretary – would know” why the machines are being stored without a contract.
Herrera, Trujillo and the secretary of state’s spokesman, James Flores, have not responded to an e-mail seeking comment for this article.
Clerks have become accustomed to having little help
Though Arnold-Jones raised areas of concern, she said Ellins is largely correct that clerks run the elections. In most counties, she said, there’s little potential for problems in the Secretary of State’s Office to affect things.
But in addition to promulgating rules and stepping in when clerks need help, Arnold-Jones said Herrera’s office has to validate computer databases. And the elections director decides how to interpret the state elections code when disputes arise.
Arnold-Jones also noted that Herrera has yet to replace Salazar.
But Denise Lamb, Santa Fe County’s elections director and a former state elections director, pointed out that there was no state elections director during the last primary election. And while she found Salazar, who had been in the job for 11 months when he resigned, to be “professional and helpful,” he was authorized to do very little without the approval of Trujillo.
Her point: Clerks have gotten used to running elections without help from Herrera’s office.
Bernalillo County Clerk Maggie Toulouse Oliver said her office will be fine regardless of whether Herrera hires an elections director before the June primary.
“I’m not going to do anything different in terms of this election, if there’s an elections administrator there or not. It would be great to have someone in that role who understands not only the election code but the law,” she said. “But if there’s not somebody, then we’re just going to put our noses to the grindstone. And if there are questions that come up, we’ll just have to deal with them.”
‘I would like to see things turn around’
Last year, Santa Fe County Clerk Valerie Espinosa considered challenging Herrera in this year’s Democratic primary. At the time, she raised a number of concerns about the way Herrera is running the Secretary of State’s Office.
On Thursday, however, Espinosa wouldn’t go into specifics about the allegations made by Salazar, though she did back up some of the statements made by Arnold-Jones about areas in which the secretary of state can directly impact elections.
Espinosa, who ultimately decided not to run against Herrera, did say that Salazar’s allegations should be “investigated properly” and “should not be taken lightly.” And she spoke highly of Salazar.
“He did nothing but try to work with the clerks,” she said. “This is not to come to anybody’s defense: It’s a fact that he worked with us and we had his ear. … He was always very cordial and professional when we had our meetings.”
“I think he just tried to do a good job,” Espinosa said. “That was what I saw.”
Salazar said he’s simply hoping for change in the Secretary of State’s Office. Now that he has turned his allegations over to the AG, he said he’s prepared to “let the system take its course.”
“I would like to see things turn around,” Salazar said. “… I would hope that changes would be made in light of these issues, because they need to be made.”