The Vincent Griego Chamber in the basement of Civic Plaza might not have been the most exciting place to be Tuesday night - but it was the most important.
More than 12 election officials energetically started to tally electronic ballots in the general election when they began to trickle in at 7:15 p.m. Tuesday. Three election officials received the cartridges as they came in while marking off precincts.
Ballots from each precinct came in the form of an electronic cartridge that was inserted into a computer and downloaded.
Around 150 paid volunteers were counting absentee ballots at the Bernalillo County Voting Machine Warehouse on Broadway Boulevard. Volunteers were not allowed to talk to the press but one individual did many of them have been there more than 24 hours.
Roughly 10 percent of the more than 60,000 absentee ballots were rejected by the voting machines. Bernalillo County Clerk Mary Hererra said that is normal. She said the writing styles and the utensils used contribute to the problem.
About 6,000 absentee ballots rejected from the machine will have to be tallied by hand, which was expected to take until 8 a.m. today.
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For the 54,000 or so absentee ballots counted, 58 percent were in Sen. John Kerry's favor, while 45 percent went to President Bush. Rep. Heather Wilson took 51 percent of the absentee ballots, and state senator Richard Romero had 47 percent.
The exact number of provisional ballots is unknown, but Hererra said the public wouldn't get the results of those ballots for at least a week. Election officials began tallying those this morning.
Hererra said a big percentage of provisional ballots won't be valid to count.
"There was a lot of misinformation," she said.
Some provisional ballots were given to people who weren't registered voters, or who had already voted, she said.
And those weren't the only ballot problems.
District Court Judge Theresa Baca, who presided over the procedure for the county, said one box of absentee ballots got delivered to the warehouse before the required 7 p.m., but the key to the box was back at the County Clerk's Office.
Lawyers on-site challenged the validity of the ballots since they were time-stamped after 7 p.m.
"They (lawyers) argued for two hours," Hererra said. "I don't think they should have challenged that. The ballots were there before 7 p.m."
Those ballots will not be counted until a hearing can be held today.
Hererra predicted a smooth election Monday, but she didn't foresee one poll not closing until after 10 p.m. Paradise Hills Community Center voters who arrived by 7 p.m. waited in line three hours to cast their votes.
Tired election officials were still waiting for the cartridges to arrive at 12:45 a.m. today. Applause was heard in the room as the unofficial results of the general election were announced at 12:53 a.m.
In the 413 precincts in Bernalillo County, Kerry received 96,521 votes, making up 50 percent of the vote. Bush wasn't too far behind with 91,864 votes, 48 percent of the vote.
Green Party candidate David Cobb got .17 percent of the vote in Bernalillo County and independent candidate Ralph Nader received .58 percent.
