We'Re Not Red Yet!

The Associated Press may have called New Mexico for Bush, but with over 17,000 provisional ballots remaining to be counted, the math just doesn’t add up. The margin of the incumbent’s lead here is so slight (8,588 votes as of Friday) that a Kerry victory can’t yet be categorically ruled out–much to the annoyance of Republican Party executive director Greg Graves, who, according to Saturday’s Albuquerque Journal (http://abqjournal.com/elex/255355elex11-06-04.htm?rrc), accused Governor Bill Richardson of attempting to steal the election in New Mexico.

Or is that “steal the election back“? On the other side of the conspiracy fence, BBC journalist Greg Palast filed a story Nov. 5 titled “Kerry won. Here are the facts.” (http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=392&row=0) Palast blames the Republican lead in NM (and other swing states) on the deliberate “spoilage” and discarding of the likely pro-Kerry voter’s ballot. Here’s a particularly amusing snippet:

… the election-bending effects of spoilage are popping up in the election stats, exactly where we’d expect them: in heavily Hispanic areas controlled by Republican elections officials. Chaves County, in the “Little Texas” area of New Mexico, has a 44 percent Hispanic population, plus African Americans and Native Americans, yet George Bush “won” there 68 percent to 31 percent.

I spoke with Chaves’ Republican county clerk before the election, and he told me that this huge spoilage rate among Hispanics simply indicated that such people simply can’t make up their minds on the choice of candidate for president. Oddly, these brown people drive across the desert to register their indecision in a voting booth.

State law requires that all votes be counted by Friday. Stay tuned.