New Mexico prosecutor says GOP county must certify vote or legal action will follow
Jun 16, 2022, 1:24 PM | Updated: Jun 25, 2022, 8:54 pm
FILE - Otero County, N.M., Commissioner Couy Griffin stands outside the federal court after receiving a verdict in his trial on March 22, 2022 in Washington. New Mexico’s secretary of state asked the state's Supreme Court on Tuesday, June 14, 2022, to order the Republican-led commission of rural Otero County to certify primary election results after it refused to do so over distrust of Dominion vote-tallying machines. (AP Photo/Gemunu Amarasinghe, File)
(AP Photo/Gemunu Amarasinghe, File)
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — New Mexico’s top prosecutor on Thursday told a Republican-led county commission to comply with an order to certify results from its primary election, the latest development in a case arising from far-right conspiracy theories over voting machines that have spread across the country.
A spokesperson for Attorney General Hector Balderas said the Otero County commission “must comply with the rule of law or we will take legal action.”
The governing commission in Otero County refused to certify the local results of the state’s June 7 primary because of unspecified concerns with the equipment, even though it has identified no problems with the Dominion systems used by the county to tally paper ballots.
Following the 2020 election, various allies of former President Donald Trump claimed that Dominion voting systems had somehow been manipulated as part of an elaborate scheme to steal the election, which President Joe Biden won.
The secretary of state’s office asked the attorney general to investigate the Otero County commission for possible violations of state election and government ethics laws. That came after the state Supreme Court on Wednesday ordered the county commission to certify its election results.
There is no evidence of widespread fraud or manipulation of voting equipment in the 2020 election, and election experts say the refusal to certify results of free and fair elections threatens the democratic process.
