In contrast to results reported on the New Mexico Secretary of State's website, actual election night material provided the numbers of voters who chose the "straight-party" option. The "straight-party" option allows a voter of a specific party to check a single box indicating the intention to vote for all the candidates in that party for all the races. The voter would check one box and believe that all those running for any office of their party would receive their vote. The "down-ticket" races refer to all of those contests below the president, such as congressional or senate races where a partisan vote was possible.
"Straight-Party" Voting
The evidence about how the "straight-party" option worked on election day came from the compiled lists of voter complaint calls received by the many election protection services sponsored by groups such as the NAACP, PFAW, MoveOn, etc. Find these complaints compiled on the Election Incidents Reporting Service (EIRS) (http://voteprotect.org). The reports shed light on the problems that occurred when voters chose the "straight-party" option in New Mexico and sixteen other states with the straight party option.
EIRS records indicate that the "straight-party" option appeared not to have included a vote for president for every party except for Republicans. When a Republican voter selected the straight party option, a Bush vote appeared to register automatically, that is, the machine showed "Bush" (with rare exceptions). "Straight-party" voters from other than the Republican Party may not have discovered the absence of their presidential vote on their review screens. And others who reported finding no presidential vote on their review screens may not have realized how their choice of the "straight-party" option contributed to the absence of a presidential vote. The "straight-party" option appeared to have created a large under-vote by means of the no-vote-for-president (except Bush) phenomenon.
The second way the straight party option contributed to the under-vote occurred when voters selected candidates outside their straight party selection. Many voters may not have known that, on electronic voting machines, after selecting the straight party option, if they then voted for a candidate from another party, that non-straight party vote cancelled the voter's straight party choices throughout the rest of the ballot. For example, perhaps a Democrat voted for the Green Party County Surveyor instead of the Democratic candidate running against him. That one vote outside the Democratic straight party would automatically cancel all the selected votes for Democrats throughout the ballot.
When choosing the straight party option, voters reported another problem. Instead of no presidential choice appearing on the voting machine screen, voters reported that the wrong candidate, often Bush, appeared. Only two EIRS reports in New Mexico (Sandoval County) came from Republicans saying that their straight party selection, at first, showed a vote for the Democratic or Green Party candidate. These voters reported that they corrected this wrong choice.
The difficulty in removing the wrong presidential choice, however, created another means of generating an under-vote. To override the automatic Bush vote or the voter’s wrong choice on the Sequoia push-button electronic voting machines, voters had to push the button for Bush (or the wrong candidate) again (a toggle mechanism) to erase the vote. Voters reported that they had to push the Bush button from two to ten times to remove that incorrect choice before they could vote for their preferred candidate.
Furthermore, after removing the vote for the wrong candidate and voting for their correct one, some voters reported that when they got to the review screen at the end of the ballot, they found no vote for president had registered. Voters reported the need to scroll back up the ballot one or two more times to vote again for their presidential choice. Even when the review screen actually showed their correct vote, citizens voiced concern that their vote would not actually register. They worried about the voters who were unable to find and correct this problem of no-vote or a wrong vote for president.
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