OOps, never mind, I read 8,000, not 18,000. Still, there is no way Kerry will beat Bush's 13,000 vote lead with those. A lot of them will be invalidated, and the rest won't break 100% for Kerry, which is what he would need.
I said NM would go for W... and they did. Many many military families in NM. W knows them and he cares for them. Gov Richards... that is another story.
The story says 13,000, not 18.
Bernalilo County is 51-48 Kerry. A break that way for the 13000 ballots is only 500 net Kerry votes. No guarantee they break that way, however. And after a 50% trash rate, there would be only 6500 to split.
Don't you remember the 2000 election?
Was too close to call with Bush holding a slight lead. Then two ballot boxes were "found" (two days later) under the back pews of churches, miraculously, EVERY vote in them was Dem, giving Bore the state by 547 votes.
Well, this is what usually happens here in New Mexico: If there are not enough Democrat votes in the first batch of manually counted ballots, another batch "turns up" somehow, and that usually does the trick. I think in 2000 the extra ballots materialized in a locked room in the county clerk's office down in Dona Ana county (or something along those lines). Bill Richardson is determined to make this state be the lonely blue island in a sea of red, just like last time. He may not be able to make that happen this time, but it won't be for lack of trying.