Voter Machine Certification 100324By Lynn Janes
The Grant County Clerks Office certified voting machines on October 2 and 3, 2024. This certification had been for the machines that would be used for the in-person election sites. The absentee voting machine certification for absentee ballots had been done the previous day, October 2, 2024.
The testing of the machines was done by Robert Zamarripa, senior county service specialist (technician), Elizabeth Trujillo, bureau of election director. and Brendan Salgad, a temporary employee for the election.
Residents have always been invited to watch the process and ask any questions they might have. The process started with maintenance and diagnostics of each machine. That included changing all the ink cartridges and making sure each machine had a total of all zero on the tabulation printout. The machines require two keys and two logins to work.
The state sends them a set of ballots that will run and some that will be rejected because of the ballot itself not being correct or not being filled at all or both circles filled in. This test had 72 ballots and 6 of those would be rejected. They have an expected outcome for this test. They ran a tabulation tape on each machine and made sure they all had a "0" all the way through both before and after running the test ballots. The outcome for these ballots will then be sent to the state to verify they have been tabulated correctly.
During this process Marissa Castrillo, county clerk, had a question from a resident attending the certification process. She asked about the drop boxes. Castrillo said any time someone drops off at that box the camera on the system notifies her no matter the time. The drop box will be emptied daily at 4:00 pm Monday through Friday during early voting and voting day November 5, 2024, it will be picked up 10 am, 4 pm and 7pm.
The post office will be accepting ballots until 7pm on election day and work overtime. Zamarripa picks up ballots from the post office every day. Castrillo said she will be in constant contact through the election process with the postmaster to make sure steps will be taken to have everything run smoothly.
Castrillo said a lot goes into putting the election together and having it all ready. She said that New Mexico elections had been named number 1 by the election performance index in a project by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology election data and science lab. The article has been put up on the Secretary of State website. https://www.sos.nm.gov/2024/03/25/new-mexicos-elections-ranked-number-one-in-nation/ . The article lists the criteria of the project.
The certification of the absentee ballot machine goes through somewhat the same process. Any that cannot be read for whatever reason such as markings being out of the circle or not filled in correctly will be passed on to an adjudication committee of two people, one Republican and one Democrat, so they can decide the intent of the voter.
Castrillo encouraged people to call her with any questions. Election information for Grant County can be found at https://grantcountynm.gov/218/Elections .
