An electronic voting machine test in Santa Fe County, New Mexico, on Friday revealed a programming error that, had it not been caught and corrected before the start of early voting next week, would not have counted hundreds -- or possibly thousands -- of votes for president and U.S. Senate in this Democratic stronghold.

If you aren't sure, don't panic yet. There are a few ways to check. Calling your county clerk is one. That, however, is going to cost you some serious cell-phone minutes, given many clerks these days are inundated with callers.

The easier way is to look yourself up on the Web site of the Secretary of State's Office.

Part of the site, called Voter View, allows a person to type in his or her name and county and check their voting status. It also lists information including city council, county commission and Senate districts as well as polling places.

Specifically, the law provides that county clerks are to compare the total votes tallied in the general election for the office of president or governor from a random selection of 2% of the voting systems used during the election throughout the state to a hand count of the ballots cast on that system. A voting system is defined as a vote-tabulating machine.

New Mexico, a battleground state already known for problem-plagued elections, may not be ready for this year's grandaddy of electoral contests.

What to do with this high-tech junkyard is a multimillion-dollar question. One manufacturer offered $1 a piece to take back its automated teller machine-like devices. Some states are offering the machines for sale on eBay and craigslist. Others hope to sell their inventories to Third-World countries or salvage them for scrap.

A few more are holding out hope that the machines, some of which were purchased for as much as $5,000, could one day be resurrected.

Seth Martin, a Republican, and Wendell Bostwick, a Democrat, took primary victories Tuesday night for the Curry County Commission District 4 slot.
Other winners in contested races Tuesday were:
• Dan Stoddard, Republican, District 2 County Commission
• Caleb Chandler, Republican, District 5 County Commission
“We have numbers that... I believe are very close to perfect if not perfect,” County Election Manager Coni Jo Lyman said around 3 p.m. Wednesday.

Curry County officials said this morning they’re unsure of vote numbers tabulated after the polls closed in Tuesday’s primary election.

“At this point we’re not aware if (results will change), but the potential is certainly there because we have some races that are too close,” County Clerk Coni Jo Lyman said.

    Nebraska-based ES&S is seeking a renewal after its original maintenance contract expired Jan. 6, a state General Services Department spokesman said this week.
    "The secretary of state is trying to sole source this and they have to justify it— that there's no one else who can operate it," said Alex Cuellar of GSD.

The mystery of what went wrong in New Mexico’s Super Tuesday Democratic Caucus deepened on Friday. Party officials on background said they absolutely were given a bad voter list from the Secretary of State – whose spokesman, in turn, defended the database prepared by ES&S, one of the nation’s large private election vendors.

With 183 of 184 of precincts reporting, Hillary Rodham Clinton held a lead of 1,092 votes — 67,921 votes compared to 66,829 for Barack Obama, according to preliminary results posted on the state Democratic Party's Web site.
New Mexico is the only one of 22 states that held Democratic primaries and caucuses on Super Tuesday yet to report a winner.
The examination of the provisional ballots, expected to begin Thursday, will be closed to the news media but will be attended by representatives from both the Obama and Clinton campaigns, party officials said.