EXCLUSIVE: Audit Finds Signs of Fraud in New Mexico House Race

An audit of absentee ballots suggests fraud may have occurred in one of the closest House races in the country, The Daily Signal has learned.

Democrat Xochitl Torres Small squeaked by Republican Yvette Herrell in the final results of the Nov. 6 election.

On election night, Herrell declared victory in the race to represent New Mexico’s 2nd Congressional District. But as more votes were counted, Torres Small secured the win.

The roughly 3,500-vote victory for Torres Small—out of about 200,000 cast in the southern New Mexico district—relied heavily on absentee ballots from Doña Ana County, the largest county in the district, including the Las Cruces area.

A new audit report obtained by The Daily Signal alleges a “concerted effort” to push for absentee votes where New Mexico voter ID laws are not enforced. It also points to potential fraud in applying for absentee ballots, and says a significant number of absentee ballots were time-stamped after the 7 p.m. deadline election night.

The report was prepared for the losing Herrell campaign by Full Compliance Consulting LLC and Herrell campaign lawyer Carter B. Harrison.

Herrell’s campaign is not contesting the outcome of the 2018 contest, but sought the review based on its concerns that extra votes appeared to pour in.

Torres Small spokeswoman Jennifer Lee did not respond to phone and email inquiries from The Daily Signal for this story.

Torres Small, 34, who was sworn in Jan. 3, replaced retiring Rep. Steve Pearce, a Republican who was re-elected by 26 points in 2016.

The House seat has been held by a Republican for all but one term since 1968.

Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for president, won the district by 10 points over Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016.

The report says the consulting firm reviewed about 12,000 requests for absentee ballots, 8,577 outer envelopes for absentee ballots, and hundreds of rejected applications from Doña Ana County.

“There were not enough irregularities in Dona Ana County alone to alter our race (though local races could have been altered),” Harrison, the Herrell campaign lawyer, told The Daily Signal in a written response. “But if other counties were to be found to have similar irregularities, the race certainly could have been altered by them.”

On election night, media outlets called the race for Herrell, 54, who has been a member of the New Mexico House of Representatives since 2011.

But well after midnight, Harrison said, the office of New Mexico’s secretary of state informed the Herrell campaign of 4,000 absentee ballots in Doña Ana County still to be counted, which would not have flipped the race to Torres Small, who previously had not held elective office.

However, the state informed the campaign of another 4,000 absentee votes that had been counted but not tabulated, which was enough to change the outcome.

The report says nongovernmental groups “are almost certainly engaging in at best aggressive—and at worst fraudulent—procurement of absentee ballot applications.”

This would have involved an outside group that requested a large quantity of absentee ballots on behalf of others, possibly without their knowledge.

Fully 25 percent of the people who purportedly requested absentee ballots from the Doña Ana County clerk didn’t mail them back, according to the report.

That is more than twice the statewide average for unreturned absentee ballots. To receive an absentee ballot for mailing back, a voter first must send in...

Read More HERE