Early voting almost here for November election

Answers provided by Irene E. Parra, communications coordinator for the Doña Ana County Clerk’s office.

• Question: For the first time in Las Cruces, there will be ranked choice voting for mayor and for city council districts 2 and 4, but not for city council district 1 or for presiding municipal judge, as each of those races has only two candidates in it. Is that correct?

Answer: Right. Only City of Las Cruces races with three or more candidates will utilize ranked choice voting.

• Does a voter have to rank all the candidates in a particular race for his or her vote to count? For example, if, in the mayor’s race, if I only vote for one candidate, or I rank my top three choices but don’t list the other seven, does my vote for the one candidate or my ranking of the three still count?

Answer: You can rank as few or as many candidates as you want. However, should you only rank one, you are forfeiting your vote in any subsequent instant runoff elections that take place.

• If one candidate gets 50 percent plus one vote in the first round in the voting for mayor or council districts 2 or 4, the counting will obviously end at that point. But, if no candidate gets that majority, does the computer stop the count after each round and wait for instructions to continue or will it simply continue with the ranked choice process until there is a winner in each race?

Answer: It will continue with the ranking process until there is a winner. However, the round by round information will be available on the New Mexico Secretary of State’s website and through our office once a winner is determined.

• Will it take longer than before to calculate vote totals if any city race goes beyond the first round?

Answer: No.

• Will it take longer because of the combined ballot, which, for the first time ever, includes city races as well as school district and soil and water conservation district, as well as a $16 million Doña Ana Community College general obligation bond question, a $10 million Las Cruces Public Schools three-mill levy question and other races?

Answer: No, because the timing of results is based on when we are able to get information back from all 40 (election-day voting) sites, not on the content of the combined ballot.

• What time do you expect votes to be finally and unofficially calculated and made public on election night?

Answer: Results will be published as they come in from the 40 different voting convenience centers. The rank choice voting races will show raw data for first votes for sites in aggregate only until we ave all results in from all sites. Only then will we run the algorithm for ranked choice voting that instantly goes round-by-round and identifies a winner for those races.