I start my duties today, Oct. 8, as an election clerk, Machine Judge and Same Day Registration official for the Nov. 5 general election. My first job is fairly simple — retrieve absentee ballots from the collection box outside the polling place where I will be working during the election and turn them into the Bureau of Elections at the Dona Ana County Clerk’s office. I’ll collect any absentee ballots there three more times before I begin my twelve days of on site work as a Same Day Registration official and Machine Judge and then finish up with one r-e-a-l-l-y long day on election day, Nov. 5.
I’ve already attended two training sessions in preparation for my work. Our procedures will be pretty much the same as they have been for the three previous elections for which I have volunteered. The overriding emphasis in our training is making sure the process is fair and accessible to everyone eligible to vote. As I have said in posts about this previously, the number of security steps we go through make it virtually impossible for someone to manipulate results of the election.
One of the things we learned during this year’s training is that the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Election Data and Science Lab has ranked New Mexico’s election process as the best in the nation. MIT’s ranking system analyzes each state’s voting procedures. New Mexico got the top spot after MIT reviewed “a variety of performance indicators measuring aspects of election administration such as voter registration rates, post-election audits, security protocols, ballot rejection rates, wait times, and more.”
Here’s a link if you want to read more about it:
New Mexico often ends up 48th, 49th or 50th on many rankings evaluating our state’s performance in such categories as poverty, education, child care, bad drivers, etc., so it’s nice that we are on the top of this particular review.
One thing of interest that was emphasized during our training is that this election is expected to have the highest turnout in recent history. We also learned that in New Mexico there have been more people who have registered as for this election as challengers, watchers and observers than in any previous election.
It will be an interesting election. I urge all of you to exercise your right to vote and have confidence that the process in New Mexico is working well.
aero-cordero.com 