Officials in Otero County, New Mexico, voted to certify major election results on Friday in compliance with a state Supreme Court order after refusing to take action, citing issues about voting machines.
In a 2-1 vote, the Republican-led fee licensed the county’s results from its June 7 major. One of the commissioners, Vickie Marquardt, mentioned she voted to certify over fears of prison expenses and attainable jail time.
“The New Mexico Supreme Court, the Democrat-controlled state legislature and the Democrat-controlled Secretary of State and the Attorney General will not allow us to withhold approval pending investigation. Instead, they are railroading this commission into rubber-stamping approval under the threat of criminal charges and jail,” Marquardt mentioned in remarks Friday. “I will be no use to the residents of Otero County from jail or if I am removed from office.”
While there isn’t a proof of any issues with the voting course of in this month’s election, the commissioners have protested using tools from Dominion Voting Systems, perpetuating conspiracy theories that got here out of the 2020 election.
The three commissioners first refused to certify the first results on Monday, citing debunked claims about Dominion voting machines. The following day, New Mexico Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver sought to compel the fee to certify, noting there was no proof to again up claims questioning the accuracy, and on Wednesday the state Supreme Court ordered the panel to certify the results by Friday.
“We dodged a bullet here,” Toulouse Oliver advised NBC News on Friday night time, including that the state’s legal guidelines and the court’s motion prevented “the system from completely breaking down.”
She mentioned the state Legislature, which is managed by Democrats, ought to contemplate extra methods to guard elections from “rogue” officials.
“The reality is had the commission stuck to their guns today and defied a court order and defied the law, they would have ended up completely disenfranchising all of the voters who came out in their county and not seeing their candidates move on to the general election,” she mentioned. “We will need to take some sort of affirmative action to put an alternate process in place if necessary.”
Otero County has about 67,000 residents and borders Texas.
Commissioner Couy Griffin spoke on the assembly by cellphone after showing in Washington, D.C., earlier in the day for a sentencing listening to following his March conviction for trespassing on the U.S. Capitol in the course of the Jan. 6 riot. He was the lone vote in opposition to certification on Friday.
“All we wanted to do was look at the technology inside the Dominion machines to make sure they don’t have the modems in them, hooked up to the internet, and hand count the ballots,” Griffin mentioned.
The Otero County fee beforehand licensed an Arizona-style partisan poll evaluate of the 2020 election, which included a door-to-door “audit force.” It triggered a March investigation by a congressional committee for potential violations of federal regulation.
In an announcement Friday, Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, mentioned the investigation into such audits was “out of concern that they would undermine the integrity of our elections.”
The commissioners subsequent refusal to certify 2022 major results is “the inevitable result of the Republican Party’s cynical embrace of the Big Lie,” Maloney mentioned. “The Oversight Committee will continue to be laser focused on the threat that election lies pose to our democracy.”
