County clerks report nothing unusual from Tuesday's polling

County clerks of Curry and Roosevelt counties had nothing out of the ordinary to report from Tuesday’s Election Day polling.

Curry County Clerk Annie Hogland said, “If there was a glitch it was the same-day voter registration tablets working slowly at the end of the day. But I wouldn’t call that a glitch, maybe a frustration.”

As for security issues and such she heard nothing from her workers; even in reviewing poll workers notebooks she said she didn’t see any problems.

“I think there was one disgruntled voter over the pens,” Hogland said.

Hogland said she was notified by the Secretary of State, as required by state statute, two poll watchers would be coming to Curry County from Common Cause New Mexico.

“But to my knowledge they didn’t show up,” she said.

Hogland described appearances by poll watchers as routine.

“It was awesome,” she said. “All of our sites balanced. Nobody was denied a ballot.”

Roosevelt County Clerk Mandi Park said the election had no security issues but was marked by more “poll challengers” at voting locations than previous years.

“They were extra sets of eyes on the process, both Republicans and Democrats,” Park said. “But they were only armed with pencil and paper.”

Park said there weren’t any, what she termed “real issues,” with the voting machines but what problems that did occur were easily resolved.

One machine caused the time to read “January 1970.”

“We were able to reset the clock and document the problem on the tabulator report,” Park said.

Roosevelt County’s results were released later than a number of counties across the state. Park said she opted to release the results in two big blocks instead of 17 small blocks because there were just four people in the office.

“The entire time we are also in communication with the poll officials, the Secretary of State’s Office, the parties, and answering phones,” Park said. “I know some would love to see the first set of results around 7:30 and I could have released Dora’s numbers that early. But 159 out of more that 4,500 is not a very ‘meaty bite.’”