Even with a thick fog over the Albuquerque metroplex on Election Day after a rainy Monday, voters stood in line early to cast their ballots before the polls opened for the day.
“We got here at five to prep everything, and then there was a little fog that’s dissipated since then, and we (saw) a pretty good lot of people excited and waiting in line to vote,” Bernalillo County Bureau of Elections Administrator Nathan Jaramillo told NM Political Report Tuesday.
Election Day has gone smoothly at the poll so far this year with only a minor computer glitch early Tuesday morning.
The same-day voter registration system had some issues but was fully operational before 9 a.m.
“We did have some slowness in the same day voter registration processing in a few counties early this morning, but that was resolved before 9 a.m. and haven’t heard any reports of that since.” Secretary of State’s Office spokesman Alex Curtas told NM Political Report Tuesday.
Related: New Mexico county, state election officials prepared for the election
If the same day registration system goes down, voters have the option to get a provisional ballot.
“You can go in, you can same day register and vote provisionally. And of course, as long as you are actually a qualified voter and are allowed to vote in this election, that vote will be counted once they count the provisional ballots,” Curtas said.
One of the counties that was affected was Bernalillo County which had 30,000 voters cast their ballots Tuesday morning before noon.
“We hope to double that at the very least by the end of the day,” Jaramillo said.
As of 1 p.m., 123,837 voters had cast their ballots in-person on Election Day. When added to early in-person and absentee votes, 793,497 voters had cast ballots.
So far, everything has gone smoothly, Curtas and Jaramillo said.
“(I) haven’t heard any, you know, thankfully, no reports of intimidation or violence or anything like that. And everyone’s just kind of trucking along,” Curtas said.
The New Mexico Secretary of State’s staff are working out of a facility on Bataan Boulevard outside Santa Fe.
They are working there as an added layer of protection, Curtas said.
“We didn’t get any sort of threats or anything, but we just have done this the past few years,” Curtas said. “So yeah, we are not actually out there on the ground.”
The SOS has chatrooms set up to connect the SOS with county clerks, vendors, the postal service, county emergency managers, representatives from the Public Service Company of New Mexico and other utilities and other interested parties in the event something happens that may affect voting, Curtas said.