More than 1,100 cast early ballots

By Zsombor Peter
Staff Writer

GALLUP — If voters find the polling sites a little quiet today, it could be because most of the people planning to vote in today's runoff between mayoral candidates Harry Mendoza and Ralph Richards already have.

According to City Clerk Patty Holland, an unusually high turnout of 1,120 people 10 percent of Gallup's registered voters took advantage of early voting at City Hall last week. That's close to twice the number of voters who cast early ballots during the March 6 general elections, when there were seven candidates in the race.

The candidates in today's runoff made an extra effort to get out the early vote this time around. But Richards better hope that last week's early voters don't follow suit with the 617 voters who cast early ballots in the general election. More than half those ballots went to Mendoza. And that was when there were five other candidates to split the vote. That should make today's turnout particularly critical for Richards.

The good news for both candidates and for voters is that the city has picked up no problems with the runoff ballots so far.

"Everything's up and running really smoothly right now," said Holland.

Things got a little lost in translation last time. A mistake translating a minimum wage proposal into Spanish forced the city to order new ballots half way through early voting. But no one noticed that the correction accidentally moved some of the ovals voters were required to fill in out of place. So when the scanning machines went to count the votes, they missed some.

None of that affected the mayor's race, however. After the city's canvassing board recounted the ballots some by hand, others with reprogrammed machines Mendoza and Richards ended up in a runoff.

The city is using the same polling sites today it used March 6. That's the fire station on Ninth Street on the north side, Indian Hills Elementary School on the east, Red Rock Elementary School on the south, and the airport on the west.

The polling sites will stay open until 7 p.m.