In a matter of years New Mexico transformed its voting system from one of the worst in the nation, to one of the best. In the 2004 Presidential race, New Mexico had the most cases of both “undervoting” (meaning that no vote is recorded) and “phantom voting” (meaning that more votes are recorded than ballots cast). Voters were discouraged by the broken system and unsure their votes were even counted.

So government officials were finally spurred into action. New Mexico completely switched over to paper ballots and created an auditing program for the general election. They have restored voter confidence and have a verifiable system with a paper trail. This is a great example of how other states can reform their voting systems to make sure everyone’s votes are counted.

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Sources:

http://votetrustusa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2564&Itemid=113

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics/july-dec08/nmirregularity_10-17.html

http://vote2008.thetakeaway.org/2008/10/20/in-new-mexico-optical-voting-machines-and-paper-trails-are-expected-to-end-undervoting/