The DOJ observers are there to provide oversight in tribal areas where there have been problems with access for Native voters in the past, Allen said.

“Our field observer said the federal observers were crowding voters a little bit,” Common Cause NM Executive Director Steven Robert Allen told The Independent. “But a precinct judge told them to back off a little bit and they did.”

But the measure also had its opponents, including members of the TEA Party. One resident says the bill would open the doors wider for fraud, “I don’t think they (election workers) enforce the existing rules, so what leads me to believe they’ll enforce the new ones?” Rep. Tom Anderson, R-Albuquerque also expressed concerns saying he’s received “hundreds and hundreds” of e-mails on the matter.

Supporters said the bill actually strengthens voter registration. It would require voters to show “documentation” to prove their identity. Supporters also said since New Mexico ranks 38th in voter turnout, the state would benefit from the 7 percent bump they anticipate would happen if the bill passes.

The bill passed committee with a vote of 4-3 and now moves on to House Voter and Elections.

So far this is the only bill Hamilton has filed. She said her next step would be to merge it with House Bill 123, a bill that would allow same-day voter registration.

“That will make it very palatable” Hamilton says, although she had yet to speak with the sponsor, Rep. Jim Trujillo, D-Santa Fe.

“I’m just not going to give up” Hamilton continued. “Constituents are going crazy.”

The bill, if it were to clear a growing number of hurdles, would require photo ID at the polls by the general election this fall.

The software error concerned straight-party voting, where voters fill in one oval on their paper ballot that indicates they want to vote for all the candidates from a political party. The test revealed that the precinct optical-scanner computers, which read hand-marked paper ballots and compile the precinct vote totals, were not counting straight-party votes for president and U.S. Senate.

According to Alternet:

“It was a simple error,” said Rick Padilla, a senior system supervisor for the Santa Fe County Clerk office, which runs county elections. “When they did the programming, they didn’t link the oval to the (presidential and senatorial votes on the) straight-party ticket.

Also according to Alternet, Terry Rainey of Automated Election Services, the company that programs the tabulator and provides technical support to machines in New Mexico:

 

It is one of the things that always has to be checked really carefully in a general election. That is why we test. The county was trying to get a head start. They saw it today in a real live test. It was fixed to the satisfaction of the (county) Democratic and Republican party chairs.

Padilla and Rainey both said that the vote count programming error was not found in any other New Mexico county. Across the state, county officials were testing voting machines before the start of early voting Oct. 18. No explanation was given for what caused the programming error.

New Mexico’s voting integrity has been sketchy since the 2004 election. That’s when the state shifted to voting on hand-marked paper ballots that are scanned by optical scan computer counters. That transition came after election integrity activists found that paperless electronic voting machines used in the 2004 presidential election did not record more than 21,000 votes for president — many in historically Democratic strongholds.

Alternet points out that “There were many explanations offered for the so-called presidential undervote, but the activists tend to believe that voters may have touched the electronic voting machine’s screen more than once, which, instead of emphasizing the presidential choice, actually deselected or erased their presidential vote.”

Because George W. Bush beat John Kerry in 2004 in New Mexico by slightly fewer than 6,000 votes, the high undervote rate was among the factors that prompted the state to return to using hand-marked paper ballots. That way, if there was another close count, county election officials could audit or recount the paper ballots to settle disputes, advocates argued.

The M100 tabulator used in New Mexico also is used in numerous swing states such as Iowa and Indiana, according to VerifiedVoting.org, a nonpartisan group that tracks electronic voting issues.

“The main thing is this is a recoverable error,” said Pam Smith, president of the Verified Voting Foundation. “In New Mexico they have paper ballots. They can recount them if you need to. New Mexico has a (vote count) audit provision (in state law). … In another state, if this happens, you could miss a ballot definition file error.”

“That is something that other jurisdictions should be aware of,” Smith said. “They should do pilot audits.”

Steven Rosenfeld, who authored the report on Santa Fe County’s voting machine error is a senior fellow at Alternet.org and author of Count My Vote: A Citizen’s Guide to Voting (AlterNet Books, 2008).