{"id":41706,"date":"2022-03-14T16:28:04","date_gmt":"2022-03-14T22:28:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/election-audit-prompts-pushback-from-new-mexico-auditor\/"},"modified":"2022-03-14T22:28:04","modified_gmt":"2022-03-14T22:28:04","slug":"election-audit-prompts-pushback-from-new-mexico-auditor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/election-audit-prompts-pushback-from-new-mexico-auditor\/","title":{"rendered":"Election audit prompts pushback from New Mexico auditor"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"New
New Mexico State Auditor Brian Colon speaks with reporters in 2019 in Albuquerque. Colon is the latest top Democratic official to push back against an independent audit of the 2020 election in one rural New Mexico county, as questions about irregularities and fraud continue to circulate in more conservative pockets across the U.S. (Associated Press file)<\/span>AP<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

ALBUQUERQUE \u2013 The state auditor is the latest top Democratic official to push back against an independent audit of the 2020 election in one rural New Mexico county, as questions about irregularities and fraud continue to circulate in more conservative pockets across the U.S.<\/p>\n

State Auditor Brian Col\u00f3n\u2019s office sent a letter Monday to Otero County commissioners saying the county is deficient in its ability to properly oversee contract compliance, pointing specifically to a recent contract signed with the private company it hired to review election records.<\/p>\n

The letter also said the audit isn\u2019t in the best interest of residents and amounts to political grandstanding.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt appears that the county commission failed to treat their government position as a public trust and instead used the powers and resources of their public office to waste public resources in pursuit of private interests concerning unsubstantiated claims of widespread election fraud,\u201d the letter reads.<\/p>\n

County Commissioner Couy Griffin was quick to address the letter\u2019s allegations. If the state has nothing to hide, he said there would be no harm in following through with the audit.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe state wants to say that they have done audits on our election, but in my opinion that is like the criminal heading the investigation,\u201d Griffin told The Associated Press, saying he did not trust the secretary of state and only becomes more suspicious as New Mexico politicians apply more pressure on the county to stop the audit.<\/p>\n

Nearly a year and a half after the 2020 election, the U.S. continues to grapple with claims surrounding President Joe Biden\u2019s win. Ballot reviews have been conducted across the country, from Arizona\u2019s Maricopa County to Fulton County, Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n

In Wisconsin, a former state Supreme Court justice examining the 2020 election in that battleground state laid out his interim findings just weeks ago and recommended that legislators consider decertifying that state\u2019s presidential result \u2014 a move attorneys have said is illegal.<\/p>\n

An Associated Press review of votes cast in battleground states<\/a> contested by former President Donald Trump also found too few cases of fraud to affect the outcome.<\/p>\n

In conservative-leaning Otero County, Griffin said door-to-door canvassing has turned up cases in which the people who voted did not live at the addresses provided. A ballot scan also is being conducted.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can honestly say I don\u2019t have skin in this deal. I just want to be able to sleep at night knowing that there\u2019s not fraud happening,\u201d Griffin said. \u201cThe question of fraud is not going to go away until we have independent audits at the county level. That\u2019s all we\u2019re trying to do \u2014 find out the truth.\u201d<\/p>\n

Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver, New Mexico\u2019s top election regulator, issued a warning about the audit last week<\/a>. She told residents to be wary of what she called intrusive questions and potential intimidation by door-to-door canvassers.<\/p>\n

The commission in January authorized a $49,750 contract for a countywide review of election records and voter registration information linked to the 2020 general election. They accepted a proposal from EchoMail \u2014 one of the contractors hired by Arizona\u2019s Republican-controlled state Senate to review election results in Maricopa County.<\/p>\n

Though Trump won nearly 62% of the vote in Otero County in 2020, county commissioners have said they are not satisfied with assurances of an accurate midterm election in 2022 by their county clerk or results of the state\u2019s risk-limiting audit.<\/p>\n

The state auditor\u2019s office pointed to three audits done by the county clerk after the 2020 election, saying no inaccuracies were noted and that the error rate between hand counting and machine counting ballots was so low that no additional testing was needed.<\/p>\n

\"Otero
Otero County Commissioner Couy Griffin presides at a public meeting May 13, 2021, in Alamogordo, N.M., in a shirt with a \u201cC4T\u201d logo that stands for Cowboys for Trump. State Auditor Brian Col\u00f3n is the latest top Democratic official to push back against an independent audit of the 2020 election in one rural New Mexico county. Col\u00f3n's office sent a letter Monday to Otero County commissioners saying the county is deficient in its ability to properly oversee contract compliance. (Morgan Lee\/Associated Press file)<\/span>Morgan Lee<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mexico State Auditor Brian Colon speaks with reporters in 2019 in Albuquerque. Colon is the latest top Democratic official to push back against an independent audit of the 2020 election in one rural New Mexico county, as questions about irregularities and fraud continue to circulate in more conservative pockets across the U.S. (Associated Press […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":41707,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[815,138],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-41706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-associated-press-new-mexico","tag-new-mexico"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41706"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41706\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41706"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=41706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}