State of Indecision Becomes State of Confusion

The story of the Democratic Caucus here in New Mexico just keeps getting more and more barak, wait, no no, of course I meant to say baroque. If any of you read Tim's comment on my previous post on this subject, you saw that he thinks New Mexico is a normal part of the USA where things like elections run in an orderly fashion. The news this evening on yesterday's vote proves that any such idea is merely an illusion. An early NM Democratic caucus was a project of our governor and erstwhile prez candidate, Big Bill Richardson in 2003, and this is only the second time that it has been held in the state. Despite Tim's imaginings, the caucus is entirely a project of the state Democratic Party, and they are the ones to hold responsible for what happened here in Albuquerque and Rio Rancho, where the story was of a baffling underestimation of potential voter turnout, and in Rio Arriba County, a wonderful story of ballot boxes (full of uncounted, unreported ballots) taken home and held overnight by party officials, which you can read here in Heath Haussasmen's blog: Uncounted Rio Arriba County ballots raise eyebrows. It's like Chicago or Texas in the 1920's, a story where election corruption is quite certainly lurking.

All that has happened so far is that the state party chair has made a kind of half-assed apology: Dems Apologize forCaucus Confusion, saying: the party failed to anticipate the turnout for Tuesday’s voting. He says the party planned for 30,000 to 40,000 voters. Instead, roughly 150,000 people cast ballots. Richardson (who, BTW, is growing a full beard now that he is out of the campaign limelight; he's looking sorta like a pudgy Abraham Lincoln these days.) has issued a statement which I actually find less than half-assed. He does make it clear that this is a Democratic party gig, and certainly one in need of vastly better organization and volunteer participation.

At the moment the two Democratic candidates are about two hundred votes apart, but since counting of the provisional ballots hasn't started yet, I bet that we aren't going to know the final results until some time tomorrow. (Photo: Flag of the state of New Mexico)

Technorati Tags: New Mexico Democratic caucus, Bill Richardson, Rio Arriba County, uncounted ballots

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