All but Block certify 2024 election after canvass; HD 57 contested

BERNALILLO — There was a clear message during the 2024 Sandoval County Commission Election Canvass Board meeting Nov. 15, and that was the Bureau of Elections staff felt “strained” during the election. That strain might not be over yet as the House District 57 race has results that are close enough to be contested. Commissioners still certified the election with four yes votes to one no vote from Jay Block.

Chief Deputy County Clerk Joey Dominguez, though tired and somewhat emotional, delivered an honest but not complete report to the board of commissioners, with the good, bad and ugly details.

“Typically, I am more prepared, but given the amount of provisional ballots we had and the lack of staffing, I’m not,” he said.

Before he began the report, he thanked the staff and apologized for any pressure they felt from him during the stressful process. Despite this praise, there were several unavoidable and avoidable problems that Dominguez readily shared with the board.

“Two permanent staff, our voting systems technician. One resigned after the primary election; one resigned in beginning of September. So we didn’t have permanent full-time voting systems technicians. We lost one of the customer service representatives at the end of September,” Dominguez said.

Other staff had to fill those roles, whom he paused to thank, which left BOE with three customer service specialists. They also brought someone in from the recording compiling leadership to assist with those vacancies.

“But clearly it put a stress on this office and our ability to do the things we needed to do,” Dominguez added.

Though he wanted to provide a full canvass report, he told the board that was not possible due to the extenuating circumstances but that he was able to at least provide the minimum requirement by state statute to present and certify the election.

“I plan on doing that at a follow-up commission meeting, but in a formal presentation, but at this point in time, you do have the minimum criteria, and this is what you’ve historically approved in the past,” Dominguez said somewhat apologetically.

Part of the reason for the delay, according to him, is due to the sheer number of provisional ballots.

“We were literally reviewing provisional ballots until yesterday around 3:30, I think; 427 is a significant amount of provisional ballots,” he said.

Of those, Dominguez says seven were from early voting. Two were disqualified from those because the presiding judges did not follow procedure. However, Dominguez stressed that the voters were contacted and were able to vote with a normal ballot. The remainder were on Election Day.

The provisional ballots were needed for a few reasons at different locations. One of the reasons was the same-day registration being pulled down by the Secretary of State’s office for 15 minutes at one location and 30 at another. Dominguez says this may seem like a short amount of time, but if one takes into account the time it takes to register (about five minutes when things are working) and vote, it can have a larger impact than realized.

Dominguez stated the BOE initially qualified 149 provisional ballots but upon a second review found 32 of them were missing something. He explained that there was some confusion about how to correctly qualify those provisional ballots the first time around. He also said this was his fault for not making the instructions clearer for the workers.

All voters who had disqualified provisional ballots were notified by letter. Voters have the opportunity to appeal that decision, though.

It was also made clear by Dominguez, after Block asked the question, that the only race that is contested in Sandoval County is House District 57 between Catherine Cullen and Michelle Sandoval. He said that the provisional ballots he talked about would not impact that race.

As numbers stand currently, Cullen leads Sandoval by 107 votes. An election recount is a process by which votes cast in an election are re-tabulated to verify the accuracy of the original results. Recounts typically occur in the event of a close margin of victory, following accusations of election fraud, or due to the possibility of administrative errors. Recounts can either occur automatically or be requested by a candidate or voters. Since the 57 race is so close, it is likely a recount will occur. However, that process goes through the Secretary of State office, not Sandoval County Bureau of Elections.

The State Election Board meets Nov. 26 and will go over any recounts.

Block further asked about how same-day registration has impacted the voting process and the staff working it. Dominguez stated bluntly that he is not happy with the system’s strain on staff.

“We want Election Day to go smooth, and then this is just a failure, and when it causes stress on the system, it causes mistakes in other areas,” Block said.

Dominguez agreed, saying he hopes his honesty about the process for staff will inspire change in the county.

Continuing his report to the commissioners, Dominguez also said that there were some other problems BOE ran into on Election Day, including machines not being properly approved, CF cards not working and polling sites not having the machines plugged into the right breakers. Dominguez reassured commissioners that BOE was able to get the CF card to work with county attorneys, party chairs and others to watch this process and make sure there weren’t any issues. This problem, however, prevented one results tape from being published on time and Dominguez had to repeat the process the day of the canvas.

He also said that machines are supposed to be plugged in to their own electrical source with no possibility that other technology draws power away from them but that at one location in Rio Rancho, a microwave and a Keurig had been plugged in on the same circuit, which caused problems.

As for the machines that weren’t properly approved, Dominguez said they had been approved but not sealed as required. Those machines were not used for votes and were replaced immediately.

Besides that, Dominguez said there was one ballot that was confused between a provisional and a normal ballot and there was one person who obtained a ballot at Rio Rancho Middle School and left without feeding it into the machine.

All issues were remedied to the BOE office’s best abilities, according to Dominguez.

The mistake that was cause for concern to Block, and his main reason for not certifying the election, was that one results tape wasn’t posted on the warehouse door the night of the election. It is a requirement in state law to have results posted the night of elections.

Block still commended Dominguez for being entirely truthful about the issues BOE faced.

“I want to thank you, Joey, for a couple things. Number one, your leadership here. And number two, your integrity. It takes a lot to sit here with people watching on camera and going back and watching this. Here you are communicating these mistakes. It takes a lot of integrity. It’s very good of you to do that. You got my total respect,” Block said.

Block said the integrity of the BOE office is not his reasoning for voting no but rather just the legality of not having the one results tape up on time.

“This was a busy busy election. I think this was the second-highest turnout we’ve had since 2008, if I remember the numbers that you and I talked about. I was over at the warehouse. Three or four times you and I tried to talk many times, but you’re on multiple phones and doing so many so many damn tasks, you just look saturated as the staff did as well, and I want to really say thank you so much and for your leadership,” Block said.

Commissioner Mike Meek also acknowledged the leadership Dominguez showcased.

“It’s easy to do this when all the audits run clean and there are no discrepancies, but the real sign of leadership is adjusting to these obstacles and acknowledging the failures in the system and yet still allowing every voter to have their say, even if 149 of them have to go to court, if that’s their choice. They still will have their say heard, and all the citizens’ voices were heard except for the person that fled,” Meek said.

He added that he thought the BOE staff did the best they could with the “hand they were dealt.” He also said he looks forward to the final report at the next commission meeting.

Commissioner Katherine Bruch took Dominguez’s pleas for better staffing to heart.

“I do think that we owe you not only our gratitude, but some corrective action on our part,” she said. “Clearly your staffing situation with those openings that were held up, in my opinion unnecessarily, is something that we have to own.”

She went on to say that she will advocate for that going forward.

Dominguez interrupted commissioner questions and comments to say something about the job.

“I’m going to reflect over the holidays and decide if I want to do this job anymore, because it’s exhausting, too. We’re understaffed, and I hope that this future commission will consider doing an analysis ... study and really invest in that staff. You have a great team, but they need support. We pulled them way too often from their families,” he said.

He made the example of one of the staff missing her son’s baseball tournament for the election.

He added that he has not had any time off in about a month.

County Clerk Ann Brady-Romero was pleased with the work from the BOE staff despite some of Dominguez’s self-deprecating comments.

“When I first started, I worked hard to hire Joey and it worked out. He is an exceptional employee,” she said.

Brady-Romero added that she thinks Dominguez should be compensated, noting he is not paid at the same rate as the rest of the chief deputy clerks in the state.

Commissioner Dave Heil, whose last meeting will be in December, told Dominguez he hopes the weeks off give him the opportunity to be with his family.

“I appreciate you taking the care to go back and look at all the detail and be able to communicate, this is what went wrong, you know? The only way you know how you fix things is knowing what went wrong,” Heil said.

He added in spite of the problems, he feels no one was denied their vote.