1 Delegate & 1,100 Votes

February 8, 2008

If you live in New Mexico you couldn’t wait to go to the polls and vote even if your governer, Bill Richardson, had withdrawn from the presidential race. But when you go to the polls, there were no ballots, or the lines were so long that you decided to go vote in another precinct. Three days later we still don’t know who won the new Mexico primary. Maybe Richardson should have stayed home and been governor.

It may be another week before we know who WINS the New Mexico primary.

On Friday, about 40 volunteers were huddled around computers, scanning registered voter signatures into computers in preparation for the count of the provisionals. Also on hand: independent observers and representatives from both campaigns. Although the stakes are smaller, the sight of people hovering over ballots might be reminiscent of Florida’s “hanging chad” paper ballot debacle of 2000, but there are differences.

The whole process was a mess! Overwhelmed polling places with long lines, some up to three hours. Too few ballots. Confusion over where to vote. Bad weather in the north. In Rio Rancho, one of the state’s largest cities, a single polling location where 1,900 people remain lined up at 7 p.m on election night.

What we do know at this point though with 17,000 provisional ballots to be counted that Hilalry has 13 delegates and Obama has 12 delegates. Whoever wins (if we ever find out) will get one more delegate vote. But why even bother with it when 796 super delegates can do whatever they darn well please at the Convention anyway.

Super Tuesday isn’t really as important or as super as are the super delegates and they are free to do anything they want. In fact, Obama would win the majority of the delegates and the super delegates could go for Hillary anyway. So, why do we have all these primaries and spend all the money, if the Democratic process (unlike the Republican primary process) isn’t democratic?

Why call the party Democratic when it isn’t?

Written by Ernie · Filed Under Election News