{"id":645959,"date":"2018-11-15T12:46:12","date_gmt":"2018-11-15T19:46:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=645959"},"modified":"2018-11-15T16:20:12","modified_gmt":"2018-11-15T23:20:12","slug":"herrell-sues-to-impound-dona-ana-county-absentee-ballots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2018\/11\/herrell-sues-to-impound-dona-ana-county-absentee-ballots\/","title":{"rendered":"Herrell sues to impound Do\u00f1a Ana County absentee ballots"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_589822\"  class=\"wp-caption module image alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 771px;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-589822\" src=\"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/Herrell-Yvette-771x572.jpg\" alt=\"Yvette Herrell\" width=\"771\" height=\"572\" srcset=\"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/Herrell-Yvette.jpg 771w, https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/Herrell-Yvette-336x249.jpg 336w, https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/Herrell-Yvette-768x570.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 771px) 100vw, 771px\" \/><p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Courtesy photo<\/p><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Yvette Herrell<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Republican congressional candidate Yvette Herrell filed a suit Tuesday asking a judge to order the impound of absentee ballots in a key southern New Mexico county after she lost to Xochitl Torres Small in last week\u2019s election.<\/p>\n<p>Herrell filed the suit in state district court and asked the court to order state police to take control of absentee ballots and associated documents from Do\u00f1a Ana County. She also wants an investigation into \u201creports of chain-of-custody issues and other improprieties,\u201d though she provided no evidence of problems.<\/p>\n<p>The Do\u00f1a Ana County Canvassing Board\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.kvia.com\/news\/new-mexico\/canvassing-board-unanimously-certifiesresults-in-nm-district-2-congressional-race\/861937095\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">unanimously certified the results<\/a>\u00a0of last week\u2019s election hours before Herrell filed the suit.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"module align-left half type-aside\">\n<h3>About this article<\/h3>\n<p>This article comes from\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/nmpoliticalreport.com\/2018\/11\/14\/herrell-sues-to-impound-dona-ana-county-absentee-ballots\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">New Mexico Political Report<\/a>,\u00a0a nonprofit news organization\u00a0focused on promoting a greater public understanding of politics and policy in New Mexico.<\/p>\n<\/aside>\n<p>In the filing, Herrell claims she was \u201cstripped of [the] title\u201d of winner of the election because of the results from the Do\u00f1a Ana County absentee ballots. Some media outlets had already projected Herrell to win, but at least one,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.sfreporter.com\/news\/2018\/11\/08\/anatomy-of-mis-call\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">the\u00a0<i>Albuquerque Journal<\/i><\/a>, did not know of the absentee ballots. The outlets have since called the race in favor of Torres Small.<\/p>\n<p>Media projections of who wins a race are not legally binding.<\/p>\n<p>Do\u00f1a Ana County announced hours after polls closed, and after the clock turned to midnight, that 8,000 absentee ballots were still not part of the unofficial results reported to the secretary of state. Of those, 4,000 were yet to be counted.<\/p>\n<p>When the county finished counting those ballots and reported the results, Torres Small took the lead. The Democrat\u2019s lead expanded further when provisional and other ballots that had to be hand-tallied were counted earlier this week. Torres Small currently leads by more than 3,500 votes, or 1.8 percentage points.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cXochitl was honored to receive a resounding majority of the votes cast, and she looks forward to working with all southern New Mexicans to help improve our health care system, fix our broken immigration system, and grow our local economies,\u201d campaign manager Brian Sowydra said in a statement in response to the filing.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Since the election, Herrell has largely ignored the media. That&#8217;s similar to her pre-election media strategy, which included not participating in any debates and rarely responding to requests from local media. However, Herrell\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/nmpoliticalreport.com\/2018\/11\/11\/herrell-goes-on-fox-news-to-dispute-vote-count\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">appeared on Fox News<\/a>\u00a0this weekend and questioned the results of the election, while not providing any details, echoing Republicans in other states and President Donald Trump. Herrell\u2019s last statement to local media was a brief statement after Do\u00f1a Ana County finished the vote tally.<\/p>\n<p>Herrell commented on the lawsuit on her Facebook page Wednesday morning, but provided no further details.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYesterday our campaign made the decision to file a Petition in Dona Ana County District Court to allow for a review of the absentee ballot process that many voters have expressed concern over,\u201d\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/HerrellForCongress\/posts\/2025597514405154?__xts__%5B0%5D=68.ARCfCVJbWKbLmeTODvDCPE8mbwPe_sdYFr93j1h3U1VfWg-Zfjz8WL5l-L7-ZM1OQeeq55NIkEHBPed6sojY9Z1kgbFQwcBV5YXrmjtO-fLDeOnwwqPj-RTGpMJHgzHYu2iuQUMFbUZTfWnOtEflZ9tsQuzK_lx_Ki6o8xh6osu5CeA8l8HzfQHR3BHMnYZZi-soVaJ7PM-o_KoWY7ExfgBQCHuY3XWvIXcubz7Ikq7_w--EpVBe5vaPAQzxofnX69wTUL7ufrLDRPDL5Ko6HaZtgdmm-jf5H3GQsKItNopW-H-Ak8mSAc7DHo62stkSIck1qhSiIpBk0AuFbvtippYc&amp;__tn__=-R\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">the Facebook post reads<\/a>. \u201cWe feel a responsibility to look into these matters in an effort to provide voters the answers they deserve, and believe this is a common sense step to ensure the integrity of this election.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The state canvassing board will meet to certify election results next week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Republican also wants an investigation into what her lawsuit calls &#8216;reports of chain-of-custody issues and other improprieties,&#8217; though she provided no evidence of problems.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":589822,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[2238,219,115,3658,3664],"class_list":["post-645959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-2018-election","tag-2nd-congressional-district","tag-dona-ana-county","tag-xochitl-torres-small","tag-yvette-herrell"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645959","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=645959"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645959\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":645964,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645959\/revisions\/645964"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/589822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=645959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=645959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=645959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}