New Mexico’s Supreme Court on Wednesday ordered county commissioners in the state of Otero to do their job and certify the election results, two days after they refused, citing unfounded concerns about fraud. The court accepted the special proposal of New Mexico Foreign Minister Maggie Toulouse Oliver, a Democrat, who earlier this week asked the court to intervene and force the three-member council to approve all the votes from the June 7 by-elections. . The committee voted Monday not to do so. The move had potentially disqualified “every Otero County voter who voted legally and safely” and harmed candidates who “sought to have their names on the ballot in the November general election,” Oliver said. A spokesman for Oliver, Alex Curtas, said the office was also seeking a criminal referral to the attorney general, which could lead to prosecutors being charged with contempt of court or removed from office if they did not follow the court’s instructions. . “This is terra nova. “It’s an uncharted area,” Curtas said. “I hope it does not end there.” The Commissioners’ refusal has brought the small 66,000 Texas border county to the forefront in a period of growing concern over the long-term damage from former President Donald Trump’s repeated claim that he was robbed of the 2020 election. . Trump’s “big lie” despite being told allegations of electoral fraud were false, say associates The deadline for certification of the qualifying elections is Friday. Under state law, county boards must prove that there were discrepancies in the ballot papers if they refused to certify the results. So far, commissioners have only said they are generally distrustful of government officials and electronic voting machines. At stake are qualifying results for one county seat and many other positions, including a district court judge, a county appraiser, and county sheriff. Otero County Commissioner Oy Coury Griffin, who is scheduled to be sentenced this Friday for violating the Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021 uprising, said the board continues to have concerns about the security of the election even after three official audits of the 2020 results and a partisan review by “volunteers” revealed no evidence of widespread fraud. Griffin falsely claimed that the machine software had not been updated since 2011 – a bipartisan committee re-certified the machines only last year – and reiterated the denied rumor that machines that were not connected to the Internet could be compromised. “We have questions that are unanswered and now we are threatened by the foreign minister that we have to certify otherwise. “It’s really unfair,” Griffin said. “I tell people that my oath is to the people I represent. I did not swear allegiance to the state of New Mexico or its electoral laws. It is my job in my office to make sure people can sleep at night. “This is a non-partisan issue – whether you are a Democrat or a Republican, we all need to make sure our elections are safe.” Proponents of her case have been working to make the actual transcript of this statement available online. These lies are based in part on an election night mistake by an official in a small Michigan county that resulted in the heavily Republican district briefly reporting that Biden had defeated Trump. The mistake was quickly corrected to show that Trump had won. But Trump allies continued to target the company. Dominion officials have denied all allegations against the company, filing several billion-dollar defamation lawsuits against various personalities who spread the allegations. However, MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, a leading election denier, still frequently speaks of his desire to see election machines melt and turn into prison bars, imprisoning election officials who falsely claim to have cast ballots. Biden. The Otero vote “is another example of how lies about Dominion have hurt our company and diminished public confidence in the election,” Stephanie Walstrom, a spokeswoman for Dominion Voting Systems, said in a statement. Alice Crites and Rosalind Helderman contributed to this report.
