New Mexicans are far too familiar with the problem: The polls close, the counting begins and … it … lingers.

Sometimes it’s a county clerk who’d rather send her staff home to sleep. Sometimes it’s a ballot box, or several of them, tucked away by an election official. All too often, at least in recent years, it’s that pesky mound of provisional ballots.

A new study by the nonpartisan public-policy organization Demos says that problems with the ballots — cast by voters whose registration is in question — could keep the presidential winner up in the air for (dare we say it?) days and lead to (oh, no!) lawsuits. Wait! It already has!

Provisional ballots were envisioned as fail-safe backstops to flawed voter lists, to be used sparingly and under limited circumstances. High numbers of provisional ballots suggest serious errors in voter registries or improper usage by inadequately trained poll workers. Americans cast 791,483 provisional ballots in the 50 states and District of Columbia in the 2006 general election, representing 1.2 percent of all ballots cast at polling places. State provisional balloting rates exceeding this level should be cause for concern. …

The states rejected 172,555 provisional ballots, 21.8 percent of the total cast, in 2006. Owing largely to differing rules and standards for determining when a ballot is to be counted, rejection rates varied dramatically among states. Questionable reasons for rejection have been challenged in court.

The study identifies eight states likely to stumble and, for once, New Mexico isn’t one of them. Instead, the black rose goes to Ohio, Arizona, Florida, California, Colorado, Wisconsin, Indiana and Michigan.

But don’t feel too smug, New Mexico. Remember February’s Democratic caucus? The party took 11 days (or was it months?) to wade through 17,000 provisional ballots — no thanks to officials not printing up enough of the real things to begin with. Two weeks after the 2006 general election, CD1 counters still had 4,000 ballots to verify, keeping Heather Wilson and Patricia Madrid on ice.

Two weeks ago, Bernalillo County was still processing 15,000 new voter registrations and Richard Abraham of Business Computing Solutions was already raising the specter of thousands of their ballots being cast out.

The San Fernando Sun reports, not surprisingly, that new voters will tip the balance in swing states. That’s if their votes get counted. And so far, early Democratic voters have the edge in those key states. That’s fueled Republicans to start filing lawsuits in Virginia, New Mexico, Colorado and Pennsylvania.

US News and World Report this week advised that tally-watchers keep an eye on Albuquerque’s new voters:

This state had the closest margin in 2000: Gore won by a mere 366 votes. Here the fight is in Bernalillo County, the Albuquerque metro area, where about half of the state’s 1.8 million residents live. New registrations have surged, along with early voting. Republicans look to roll up big wins in the south and east — the Texas border counties of Curry, Chaves, Lea and Eddy. Democrats counter that with an advantage in Santa Fe to the north. The state should go to whoever gets the edge in Bernalillo, which Gore won by only 4,212. A pure tossup.

Word to the wise Election Night party-planners: Pack your jammies.