Photo by Laura Bell.

New Mexico voting rights advocates reported this morning that there have been few problems reported so far on this Election Day.

“We’ve caught a few problems this morning, including one at Grants Middle School, …[where] a caller reported that poll workers were requesting physical ID from every voter at that polling place, which is contrary to New Mexico law,” Steve Allen, executive director of Common Cause of New Mexico said.

Common Cause and other groups, including the New Mexico Federation of Labor, are part of a nationwide voting rights coalition called Election Protection.

In New Mexico, only first-time voters who registered by mail are required to show identification at the polls. Allen said volunteers had been sent out to investigate the problem at Grants Middle School and that he thought it would be resolved quickly.

“I believe it’s going fairly well,” said Carter Bundy of the labor federation. “There are no systemic problems.”

Also today, the McCain/Palin campaign held a conference call with reporters on the subject of vote fraud. Introducing the call, spokesman Brian Jones said, “We have seen some troubling instances of voting irregularities. We’ve seen instances of voter fraud, we’ve seen instances of voter intimidation.” But none of the speakers on the call said anything about voter fraud. I queued to ask the speakers about it, but they only took a handful of questions before ending the call.

After a rundown of some specific problems in Pennsylvania, New Hampshire and Virginia, McCain-Palin spokesman Ed O’Callaghan said he did not see any systemic or organized problems. New Mexico was not mentioned during the call.

And we have a report from the Independent’s Joel Gay, who voted this morning in Albuquerque’s North Valley: “I went over at noon, which should have been as busy as it gets, but it was 25 empty booths and me,” Gay said. “One of the poll workers said they had a line when they opened the doors at 7 a.m., but it cleared out quickly. They chalked it up to early voting.”