{"id":3922,"date":"2008-10-31T02:00:00","date_gmt":"2008-10-31T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/2008\/10\/herrera-concerned-about-election-in-dona-ana-county\/"},"modified":"2008-10-31T02:00:00","modified_gmt":"2008-10-31T08:00:00","slug":"herrera-concerned-about-election-in-dona-ana-county","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2008\/10\/herrera-concerned-about-election-in-dona-ana-county\/","title":{"rendered":"Herrera concerned about election in Do\u00f1a Ana County"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>County official says his office is handling the flood of absentee ballot requests and will be fine on Tuesday<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

The secretary of state says she\u2019s concerned that the election may not run smoothly in Do\u00f1a<\/st1:placename> Ana<\/st1:placename> County<\/st1:placename><\/st1:place> on Tuesday unless more help is brought in, but the man in charge of the county\u2019s election says things are going well and will be fine on Election Day.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Mary Herrera<\/a> said in an interview that her office has received a large volume of complaints this week from people having problems in Do\u00f1a<\/st1:placename> Ana<\/st1:placename> County<\/st1:placename><\/st1:place>, primarily with absentee voting. Herrera said the county\u2019s acting elections supervisor, Mario Jimenez, and his staff are doing an excellent job, she believes they are stretched to thin.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think they have enough people, and it\u2019s just not fair to the voters,\u201d Herrera said on Thursday.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Jimenez took issue with Herrera\u2019s assessment of the situation. Though he and his staffers have been busy dealing with the high volume of absentee ballot requests, he said they\u2019re handing it.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t feel like I\u2019m understaffed right now. Everything seems to be going real good,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Herrera said the majority of complaints have come from people who have not received absentee ballots in a timely manner. In addition, several people have complained that, when they tried to call the Bureau of Elections<\/a>, no one answered the phone.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

The number of absentee ballot requests has been high around the state, which has caused delays in many counties, but Herrera said the vast majority of complaints to her office have come from Do\u00f1a<\/st1:placename> Ana<\/st1:placename> County<\/st1:placename><\/st1:place>.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

\u201cAll week long it\u2019s been Las Cruces<\/st1:place><\/st1:city>. It\u2019s been one after the other, one after the other. It\u2019s too heavy to ignore,\u201d Herrera said.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

In response to the delays, earlier this week Herrera authorized counties to allow voters who don\u2019t want to wait for their absentee ballots to instead vote in person at early voting sites.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Herrera said she\u2019s also going to send two staffers from her office to Do\u00f1a<\/st1:placename> Ana<\/st1:placename> County<\/st1:placename><\/st1:place> on Election Day to help. And she called the chairman of the county commission on Thursday to ask the county to direct more staffers to assist the elections bureau.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019d better address this now, when we can, instead of trying to do it on Election Day,\u201d Herrera said.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

There were more than 20 people at the county clerk\u2019s office around 8 p.m. Thursday evening preparing absentee ballots to be mailed out. Jimenez said the ballots headed oversees would be overnighted so the recipients would have time to return them by Election Day. He said all absentee ballot requests from the last two days were being sent out Thursday evening, and the number of requests dropped significantly Thursday.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Jimenez said his office has also instituted \u201ccurbside voting\u201d for those who haven\u2019t received an absentee ballot and want to instead vote early but can\u2019t walk. An elections worker will meet them at their vehicle if they can get a ride to a polling place. After the voter fills out a ballot, the elections worker will take it inside and feed it into a counting machine for him or her.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Jimenez is running an office that is without its elections supervisor, Lynn Ellins, who by state law can\u2019t work because he\u2019s a candidate for county clerk. In addition, the outgoing county clerk, Rita Torres, suffers from health problems and isn\u2019t as involved in running the office as she once was.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Jimenez said there\u2019s only one task for which he needs more bodies: He\u2019ll be looking for a few more people to help presiding judges unload materials when they return them to the clerk\u2019s office after the polls close on Election Day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

County official says his office is handling the flood of absentee ballot requests and will be fine on Tuesday The secretary of state says she\u2019s concerned that the election may not run smoothly in Do\u00f1a Ana County on Tuesday unless more help is brought in, but the man in charge of the county\u2019s election says […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3922","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3922","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3922"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3922\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}