Dona Ana County Holds Another Round of Third-World Elections

Many groups who study elections list transparency as among the most important hallmarks of elections in the modern world. Elections should be zero-trust – that means any candidate or citizen should have enough access to the election process and documents that they can self-verify whether the results were honest. Even the Carter Center, who sent droves of observers throughout New Mexico to “observe” the 2024 election, urges maximum transparency and recommends the media and the public have full access to the ballot counting process.

Fundamentally, elections in New Mexico are already broken because no voter ID is required. There is nothing stopping anyone from claiming any identity they want and voting in someone else’s name. If scaled, this process can be used to steal any race. No matter how transparent everything else might be, there is no knowing who is casting votes, and whether those votes are legal. This situation is so absurd that only the truly brainwashed, or truly corrupt, can defend it.

Also, the extensive use of computers for electronic tabulation and internet-connected compiling of results provides a barrier to the public’s observation of their election since whatever a computer does within its internal programming is inherently a secret. But even the paper trail is now hidden from New Mexicans thanks to legislation passed in 2022 which was roundly rejected by the public but supported by Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver.

Supposedly, candidates and parties in New Mexico still have a right to at least place observers in the polling places and be present when absentee ballots are being opened and scanned into computers in the County Clerks’ offices. Even this one remaining right to transparency was completely undermined by Democrat Dona Ana County Clerk, Amanda Askin, during the 2024 election.

While most races were decided on election night, several legislative seats remained uncalled for days throughout New Mexico. One of these races was for State Senate District 38, between Republican Samantha Barncastle Salopek, and Democrat incumbent Carrie Hamblen. Salopek is an attorney, comes from a well-known local family, and had received endorsements from several prominent local Democrats who are disgusted with the radical policies being enacted in New Mexico. Hamblen is a local public radio host and staunch advocate of radical policies.

Transparency in Dona Ana County was off to a rough start on election day when Askin kicked all observers out of the room where the absentee ballots were being processed in the early afternoon, telling them not to return until 7 p.m. When the observers returned at 7 p.m., Askin found an excuse to keep the Republicans out of the room for another hour.

Two days later, Dona Ana County “found” 1,000 ballots, lied to the Republican candidate about when they would be processed, and then started processing them with no observers present as reported by Barncastle on her Facebook page:

“UPDATE: Early this morning I received a call that DAC Elections Bureau “found” 1000 absentee ballots (yes, FOUND them 2 days after the election!), and that they would be counting them today. Challengers and Watchers were sent to watch the process but we’re told to leave because they were not actually going to convene today. A couple of hours later, under the suspicion something was awry (because we could still see that they were handling ballots and other election materials even after they told our people to leave), my counsel went to inquire, and was told that after our challengers and watchers left, they decided to go ahead and convene and begin counting absentee ballots (and they never notified the Republicans). Once allowed back inside, our people were not allowed to sit anywhere near the process to observe. We do not know if those are all the ballots they “found” but we do know additional numbers just appeared on the Secretary of State’s website showing that my opponent now has a lead of 230 votes over me (previously it was 189). We also know there are still outstanding votes to be counted, but we do not have information on what kind of ballots (assumed provisional) or how many. We understand those will be handled in conjunction with the canvass. Long story short, results aside, several laws were broken today. This is more than disappointing.”

Even when observers were in the room, they were kept behind orange cones and forced to site at tables where they could not see what was going on:

On Saturday, November 9th, the candidates were informed by Askin that another 500 ballots had been found! According to another Facebook post from Salopek, this time Askin refused to answer any questions from the Republicans, and refused to let them in to observe the ballot processing until law enforcement forced them to open the doors:

“UPDATE: The numbers remain unchanged (so far tonight). However, after receiving ZERO response from the County today, regarding our request for information from yesterday, not much happened today. That is, until this evening when I learned there were additional ballots being counted by the absentee precinct, a total of around 500. This is IN ADDITION to the 1000 we were told existed yesterday. Here is what happened: 1. We learned there were additional ballots (another 500). 2. We sent Challengers and Watchers to observe. 3. We were not let in, and our people called the cops and were eventually let back in (it is a legal requirement that both parties be notified AND present, plain and simple). 4. The main room has a barricade that prevents us from having any real ability to do anything while there’s a second room where something is being done out of view and we do not know what that is. 5. They refuse to tell our people what is happening in that room. 6. We are still being given only snippets of information at any given time, despite trying many different avenues. There is more – I am working on confirming whether there are any Democrat Challengers or Watchers involved, but so far, to my knowledge, they are NOT in the room, they do not seem to care having already called all of their races on their own, and what’s more, they are NOT having the same issues we are having when it comes to getting information (even though they aren’t even present!) – per one person from Sarah Silva’s camp, who has informed us he has had no trouble getting information from DAC.”

The final tally on the Secretary of State’s website shows Hamblen defeating Salopek by a few hundred votes.

For the record, this story from Askin about “finding ballots” and then “finding more ballots” is bogus. The number of ballots that have been cast is known within a dozen ballots by the end of election day. The number of in-person votes is updated in real time as people check in at polling places. The number of absentee ballots that have been requested and returned is also updated several times each day during early voting, and the required chain-of-custody documentation is a secondary record of how many absentee ballots are in the possession of the County Clerk at any time. The running total of how many ballots have been cast is always available to the election officials. The only unknown at 7 p.m. on election day is how many ballots were turned in at the drop boxes throughout the county – in 2020 only 10 absentee ballots were turned in this way on election day. Meaning the “finding” of about 1,500 ballots in Dona Ana County is fiction.

The disgusting display of corruption during this latest election from the Dona Ana County elections office and Amanda Askin are nothing new. Askin has a long history of “finding ballots” when races are close and Republicans are about to win, only to ultimately “lose” to Democrats by incredibly narrow margins. One notable instance of this was in the 2018 U.S. Congressional District 2 race when Republican Yvette Herrell was winning on election night, only to ultimately lose to Democrat Xochitl Small as the absentee ballots kept rolling in. Herrell obtained a professional audit of that election which found massive problems in the chain-of-custody documentation for absentee ballots and ballots accepted after the deadline of 7 p.m. on election night. Askin was never held to account for any of this.

The 2020 election was also fraught with irregularities that took place on Askin’s watch. The Otero County Audit of the 2020 Election included an analysis of the State Representative District 53 race, which covers parts of both Otero and Dona Ana Counties. The analysis concluded that, in Dona Ana County, more than 8,100 absentee ballots had no chain of custody whatsoever, and 200 ballots were turned in for processing the day after the election, causing the Republican in that race to go from winning by handful of votes, to losing to the Democrat.

Further, an election worker noticed that a black box was kept outside the Dona Ana County elections warehouse and that it was full to the brim with several thousand absentee ballots days before the 2020 election. The box was not an official drop box, and the warehouse is in an obscure location on the outskirts of Las Cruces. It is illegal to receive ballots this way, and who would have even known it was there? This too, was covered up by Askin.

Having spent much of the last four years investigating and studying New Mexico’s elections, I’ve had occasion to meet many of the County Clerks throughout the state. I could tell that some of them did not particularly appreciate that I have been drawing attention to the many shortfalls of New Mexico’s election system, but for the most part they took their duty as public servants seriously and were professional and polite. This is not the case with Amanda Askin or many of the people in her office. She is openly hostile to conservatives, she refused to produce requested public documents as required by law on many occasions and has told me flat out that she does not care about the irregularities discovered in her office.

So, this latest fiasco from the Dona Ana County Clerk does not surprise me at all. But I feel for candidates who give months of their lives to run for office in Dona Ana County to try to give a voice to the many conservative people of both parties who are being run over by the radical left. It’s time for citizens to demand accountability from Amanda Askin who continually runs third-world elections in Dona Ana County.