New Mexico Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver (D) has filed a lawsuit directly with the state Supreme Court over the refusal to certify election results from last week’s primary races by one county’s Republican-controlled board of commissioners.
Three members of the Otero County Commission, which includes the person who stormed and seized the U.S. Capitol Building on January 6, 2021 on January 6, 2019, have chosen not to sign off the results of this election. they are skeptical of the Dominion Voting Systems machinesThey were used for tabulating the ballots. Their fears seem predicated the false notion that the machines were tampered with during the 2020 election to help Joe Biden win the presidency – a lie perpetrated and repeated by former President Donald Trump and supporters who sought to keep him in office beyond his four-year term.
The Otero County commission has made this determination despite any proof of malfeasance in last week’s races, basing their decision entirely on the false claims of fraud that Trump and his loyalists have pushed over the past two years.
One of the members of the commission includes Couy Griffin, a co-founder of the group “Cowboys for Trump” who was convicted in federal court earlier this yearFor being part of the mob Trump loyalists who illegally entered Capitol grounds. Griffin’s sentencing for his role in that event is set to be announced later in June.
Another commission member, Vickie Marquardt, didn’t cite any real reason beyond distrust of the Dominion-based machines when explaining her vote.
“I have huge concerns with these voting machines,” Marquardt said. “When I certify stuff that I don’t know is right, I feel like I’m being dishonest because in my heart I don’t know if it is right.”
The commission voted last week to do a hand count of the ballots instead — a process that is not only more costly, but also less reliable than using machines to count votes. Other officials noted that the order was also from the commission goes against state and federal laws.
In a press release announcing her lawsuit, Toulouse Oliver took issue with the commission’s actions, noting they had no basis to act as though the votes in the county primary elections were compromised.
“New Mexico’s 2022 Primary Election was conducted with the highest standards of election administration by dedicated county clerks and civil servants across our state,” the secretary of State said. “The post-election canvassing process is a key component of how we maintain our high levels of election integrity in New Mexico and the Otero County Commission is flaunting that process by appeasing unfounded conspiracy theories and potentially nullifying the votes of every Otero County voter who participated in the Primary.”
Toulouse Oliver’s lawsuit further noted that the county commissioners “identified no deficiency in the election results, but rather made unsubstantiated claims about the voting systems in use throughout the state.”
While the Republican commissioners’ complaints in this instance have no basis in reality, there are legitimate concerns about voting machinesThese issues need to be addressed. The majority of voting machines in the United States are managed and run by private companies. Local governments have very little regulation due to the contracts they sign. There is no federal standard on how these machines should be monitored, and many tests by tech experts have shown that they are vulnerable to hacking.
Dominion Voting Systems has filed several billion-dollar defamation lawsuits against Dominion Voting Systems News organizationsAnd Trump-loving far-right loyalists who have repeatedly alleged that Dominion machines helped Joe Biden win the 2020 election by changing voters’ preferences.
While elections experts have warned that concerns about the security and regulation of the voting machines should be taken seriously, the attempts by Trump and his supporters to overturn Biden’s legitimate victory have been proven to be based on patently false claims made by Trump himself.
