Republicans Attack Medical Marijuana in New Mexico

I think Republicans love attacking medical marijuana because it combines their war against science, their joy at denying people health care, their glee at jailing people of color, and their disdain for the young.

How the Tea Party Continues to Screw Over Mainsteam Republicans

One of the narratives coming out of the midterm elections was how Tea Party orthodoxy cost Republicans control of the Senate, through dooming mainstream Republicans a chance to win in Nevada, Colorado, and Delaware.

This emphasis on orthodoxy over power continues to bite Republicans on the state level. Take New Mexico. The speaker of the house in New Mexico is Ben Luján, a liberal from northern New Mexico. The Land of Enchantment is politically complex because of regional and racial differences. Democrats do get elected in more conservative southern New Mexico, but then tend to be centrists. In 2010, those New Mexico blue dogs combined with Senate Republicans to get a centrist Democrat elected as president pro tem. This was in the cards for this session of the House as well, with Las Cruces centrist Democrat Joseph Cervantes set to take the speaker position with Republican help.

Then the New Mexico tea partiers got involved. Outraged that Republicans might vote for a Democrat, even if it would help their cause, they forced Senate Republicans to back out of the deal. Cervantes' candidacy collapsed and Lujan was re-elected to another term as speaker.

Historical Image of the Day

"Corn Harvest, Taos," painting by Theodore Wores, 1917

Historical Image of the Day

Masonic Temple, Santa Fe, New Mexico. The city's most hated building by Santa Fe architectural traditionalists, which automatically makes it my favorite building in the city. Constructed, 1912

Valles Caldera

In a piece of good environmental news, New Mexico Senators Tom Udall and Jeff Bingaman introduced a bill yesterday to allow the National Park Service to take over the 89,000 acre Valles Caldera Preserve. In the Jemez Mountains of northern New Mexico, the Valles Caldera was a remnant ranch from the days of late 19th century hunting preserves. This largely undeveloped piece of land has outstandingly beautiful landscapes. It was deeded to the federal government as a trust, with the understanding that a board of directors would develop a plan to make the ranch at least break even, if not turn a profit.

That process has been a disaster. Originally the board included a number of stakeholders, including many leading New Mexico environmentalists. Not surprisingly, the Bush Administration politicized the process, appointing figures to the board with little interest in running it or in turning it into a centerpiece of advanced land management.

Allowing the National Park Service to run the ranch, allowing limited access and continuing its historic mission, could be a boon to the place. It should not be overrun by tourists. New Mexico Hwy. 4 runs through the ranch's southern end, giving tourists views of the large elk herds on the property. For most tourists, that should be enough. Limited hiking, fishing, and hunting opportunities was always part of the Caldera's mission and this should continue.

In any case, this area is one of the few national jewels not in the park system and so this is very good news.

Native American Health Care

Well, this ain't good:

Dozens of people given free blood sugar tests April 24 are at a slight risk of having been exposed to two forms of Hepatitis and/or HIV, which causes AIDS, due to the improper administration of the testing devices, University of New Mexico School of Medicine officials announced Thursday.

As many as 33 of 55 given the free blood sugar tests at an event at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center could have been exposed to other people’s blood and possibly infected, said Dr. Bob Bailey, associate dean for Clinical Affairs for the UNM School of Medicine.

...

What they had determined by Thursday was that 10 students from the University of New Mexico Physician Assistant program had decided to administer free blood sugar tests and bought the testing devices themselves.

A faculty member from the PA program accompanied the students to the event, where the students administered the tests. The first error occurred when the students employed a particular testing device meant for a single patient on multiple patients, exposing them to another person’s blood, Bailey said.
The students were not properly trained on the device, he added. The third error happened when the students kept no records, so the school had no names of those potentially infected when they began trying to track them down.

“The UNM School of Medicine deeply regrets this error and sincerely apologizes to all those who may have been exposed, and to the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center,” Bailey said.

The real story here is that the health care system provides such poor care for Native Americans that student-provided testing, however poor it may be, proves really appealing for them. In fact, Native Americans receive less access to virtually all of our social services and other forms of infrastructure. For example, it took until the Clinton Administration for Navajos poisoned by uranium mining in the 1950s to receive anything resembling adequate care and compensation, by which time many of the affected were dead. A majority of residents on the Navajo reservation do not have electricity, despite the fact that enormous coal-fired power plants are just off their land in New Mexico.

Native Americans suffer from extreme obesity and diabetes rates due to the radical changes in their lifestyles and diets over the past 125 years. Infant mortality rates are higher than the national average, as is drug use, suicide, and many other negative health indicators. While some of this story is unique to Native American and Native American history, it also shares many commonalities with urban African-Americans, poor whites in Appalachia, and Latinos in many parts of the nation. For all of these groups, health care is inadequate and when it is available, it is often shockingly sub-standard, as we see in this story.

The other thing to wonder is why the students chose to do this. Obviously they saw this as a good opportunity to practice their craft. Was it because the patients were Indians? Do we just assume that the extreme poor and racial minorities are a open field for medical testing? Certainly we have in the past. While I doubt the students were malicious in their actions, it does suggest an unconscious belief about Native American bodies and medical testing.

But again, the real story is how our health care system serves so many of our citizens so incredibly poorly.

Yet Another Stupid Move from the New Mexico Legislature

Shorter New Mexico Politicians: "Between allowing concealed weapons in restaurants and refusing to take a strong stand against drunk driving, we'll lower our state's population yet!"

Seriously - I don't understand why any legislative body would find setting a minimum prison sentence for drunk driving and reducing from four to three the number of DWIs before it becomes a felony to be objectionable. I understand the legislature is worried about cost to the state, but you're the legislature - find ways to reduce spending. Might I suggest firing a few regents on the UNM Board of Regents and reducing payroll ? Seriously - yes, the state is in a deficit, but this is the kind of law that makes as much sense to pass as anything. But no - New Mexico's legislators are apparently determined to make a strong push as "worst state-legislative body in the country." The competition is stiff, but with decisions like these, don't count New Mexico out yet.

[UPDATE] Well, at least they're willing to crack down on texting-while-driving...

One of Many Problems with Higher Education Today

The New Mexico Independent notes that the New Mexico state Senate yesterday voted to confirm a group of University of New Mexico regents to another term.

Why is this such a big deal? Because UNM is on the front lines of everything wrong with higher education. Because the faculty gave a vote of no confidence against the confirmation of Jamie Koch by a vote of 482-7. And no one cared. A few senators stood  up for the faculty, but Koch was confirmed by a 31-5 vote.

What's so bad about Koch and the current administration. For one, they don't care about students. Two, they are looking to corporatize the university as fast as possible. Three, they flat out told the humanities that they don't matter anymore.

But perhaps the biggest issue is the reallocation of priorities to non-necessary functions. For instance:

The cost of administration at UNM had jumped to $8.2 million in 2008, up from $2.6 million in 2002, Dr. Tim Lowery, a UNM professor, told lawmakers sitting on the Senate Rules Committee Monday morning.

Meanwhile:

Opponents in a Senate committee hearing held early Monday, and later on the Senate floor, complained that the university had become politicized during Koch’s tenure as president of UNM board of regents and that top administrators’ pay had skyrocketed compared to spending on some student-focused programs. They also lamented the university’s 44 percent graduation rate and pointed to the falling faculty-to-student ratio at UNM. The teacher-student ratio has fallen from around 15 to 1 in 1998 to 21 to 1 in 2008.

No one has done more to corporatize UNM than Koch. One state Senator put it bluntly:

Sen. Gerald Ortiz y Pino, D-Albuquerque, said the battle over Koch’s nomination boiled down to a central tension between two “very different ways in how a university operates.”
“We’ve moved into a corporate model,” Ortiz y Pino said on the floor of the Senate, where Koch’s nomination was sent following the Rules Committee’s recommendation that he win confirmation. “The regents are the corporate board and they work with the senior management. That’s certainly a model well established in industry. It’s a new model for the university.”

Precisely. And we see how well this corporate model of running the economy has worked. High unemployment, enormous bonuses for top executives, outsourcing everything possible, opposing national health care that would lower insurance costs for both employer and employee, a total lack of oversight, etc., etc.

Yep, that's the modern university. Modeled after failed corporate models that benefit the few at the expense of the many.

Indian Immigrants in the American West

As a scholar of the American West (a hat I don't wear very often on this site, but one in which I have a ton of training), I have always been fascinating by the stories of nineteenth and early twentieth-century Chinese immigrants in the most isolated parts of the region. How did they get there? How did they survive being able to communicate with no one? What stories they must have--except there were so few people they could tell them to.

I am similarly interested today in the story of Indian immigrants to the region. Wherever I go in the West, Indians are running hotels. How do they end up in eastern Oklahoma, central Wyoming, or western North Dakota? What is up with that? Why? Is there some Indian hotel mafia assigning people to these places? How did they get involved in hotel operating to begin with?

Yesterday, I was driving to Albuquerque, where I am spending the holiday. I had just crossed into New Mexico on I-40 and I was getting hungry. I was thinking that another bland Subway veggie sandwich was in the offing. But as I approached the exit for San Jon, New Mexico, I saw a bunch of signs promoting an Indian truck stop. Wondering what on earth this could be, I pulled over. The Indians had closed the gas station, but were running a convenience store/restaurant. Indian food in San Jon, NM!!! What? The entirety of the buildings at this exit are the truck stop and a road maintenance station. I don't think the town really exists anymore. Where these guys are living, I do not know. Tucumcari, an isolated place in its own right, is about 20 miles west. Maybe they live there and commute to this god forsaken place on the high plains everyday. But I was absolutely floored by this whole scenario. The food wasn't the best Indian I've ever had, but it was certainly good enough to wish that Indians did this across the country and that I wouldn't have to eat at Subway ever again.

Historical Image of the Day

Moreno Valley, Colfax County, New Mexico. Date unknown, but I'm guessing mid-20th century.

Historical Image of the Day

Barbecue dinner at local fair, Pie Town, New Mexico, 1940. Suitably, there seems to be a lot of pie served.

Photo by Russell Lee.

Kilmer for Governor?

According to Marjorie, Val Kilmer is considering running for governor of New Mexico. He even held an impromptu press conference yesterday at the New Mexico capitol building.

Kilmer for Governor? I can't imagine any potential problems there!

On the other hand, it's New Mexico, so who knows what could happen.

Historical Image of the Day

"Indian Atrocities in New Mexico," from John Frost, Pictorial History of Mexico and the Mexican War, 1848

This image is taken from Brian Delay's interesting article "Independent Indians and the U.S.-Mexican War," published in the American Historical Review in February 2007.

Same Day Voter Registration in New Mexico?

I hope so, anyways. Back in November it came out that New Mexico was considering Election Day Voter Registration (you can read some of that old news here and here). Well, its on the table in the New Mexico State Legislature, which begins its 2009 session on January 20th. You can read the draft of the bill here. The way the bill is currently written, any person who is allowed to vote and not registered at the time early voting begins or on Election Day can show up at their precinct with the proper voter identification requirements and register to vote. 

There is a somewhat minor problem with the bill as it is (depending on how you look at it). It requires that a unregistered voter present themselves at the precinct in which they are supposed to vote had they been registered before the standard deadline. The way elections are currently run in New Mexico makes this somewhat difficult. The poll worker in charge of registering the voter would have to call the County Clerk's office and have them figure out if the voter was in the correct precinct. This might be ok if there aren't that many people who are registering when they vote, and it assumes that the poll worker could actually reach the Clerk's office. Polling locations on Election Day are currently not equipped with computers that would allow poll workers to verify where the person is supposed to vote (not to mention the terrible lack of internet access in many rural areas of New Mexico). And, many Clerk's offices do not have enough phone lines dedicated to dealing with Election Day issues. These are minor problems as long as someone has the foresight to deal with these technological issues before the next election. I'm not that worried about the bigger counties, but the smaller, primarily rural counties are likely have more problems. 

I hope this passes. Updating polling places in New Mexico with computers with internet access would really help reduce a number of other issues like registered voters showing up at the wrong location without being able to find their correct precinct, and helping reduce the number of provisional voters, which tend to bog down the final tallying of votes. 

If Only Bill Richardson Had Kept His Beard, Perhaps This Wouldn't Have Happened

Well, this is certainly interesting. I have no idea if Richardson has done anything illegal or not, and I honestly don't care, but it wouldn't exactly be shocking that a New Mexico politician is involved in some shady clientelistic relations. Still, if he'd kept his beard, maybe his personal magnetism would have prevented all this...

Counting Absentee Ballots in Albuquerque

Here are some images of the counting of Absentee ballots in Albuquerque from this afternoon. There aren't very good because I was not allowed to take pictures in the actual area where people were working. In the second picture, you can see a bunch of people behind a fence. That is where the four machines that count the absentee ballots are located. The county hopes to finished counting all the ballots tonight, and as you can see, this is a massive operation. 

I've heard from several friends that absentee ballots aren't counted unless the race is close, or that they don't count them until the election is over. I'm not sure these somewhat crummy pictures are convincing evidence that these rumors are false, but they are.

New Mexico's Election Process

(This is long, but I need to make up for not posting in the last several weeks!)

Last week I attended two poll worker training sessions in preparation for some Election Day observations I will be involved in tomorrow. I thought it might be interesting to outline exactly how elections are run here in New Mexico, since I’ve come across a lot of people recently that are not only really skeptical of the election process, but just have no idea what happens. While my training was limited to Bernalillo County (where Albuquerque is located), the process across the state is theoretically similar and the same training materials are used state-wide. The only exception is some minor changes to the process in Albuquerque because of its size. Tomorrow, I will be part of a team observing elections in Doña Ana County, New Mexico, which includes Las Cruces, Hatch, Anthony, and a number of other small towns in Southeastern New Mexico, and I hopefully will be able to do some live blogging about what we are observing and how much the observed process differs from how the election should be run. There will also be teams observing in Albuquerque, Santa Fe, and Farmington, so if anything interesting happens in those areas we will be in touch and I hope to be able to blog about those areas as well.

Background

In New Mexico we have paper ballots where we fill in a bubble for each choice we make. A sample ballot can be seen here. It is a lot like a scan-tron, and after an individual fills in their ballot, it is then fed into the voting machine, called an M-100 Voting Tabulator. The voting machine is nothing more than a big metal box, with a scanner on the top. There is an electronic zip disk (yes, they actually still use zip disks) that includes the code for each precinct inserted into each scanner, which allows the scanner to read the ballot and record the votes correctly. When the machine is turned on, a zero tape is printed out that shows all the counts for each race and ballot question are at zero. When the polls close, another tape is printed out that includes the results for all races and questions.

At each precinct, there is an election board that is made up of a presiding judge, and a number of poll workers. Each election board is supposed to be balanced between Republicans and Democrats. I attended both the presiding judge training, and regular poll worker training.

Prior to Election Day and Opening the Polls

Presiding judges are required to attend a 4-hour training session prior to each election. The training I attended included about 100 people, and I would say about half of them had served before as presiding judges. The training session includes a video presentation of how to set up and take down a precinct, what the voter ID law is in New Mexico, what to do in case of emergencies or problems in the precinct, how to deal with provisional ballots and absentee ballots, and how to use the M-100 voting machine and the automark system, which is a voting assistance machine for those with special needs. There was a wide variety of people at the training, definitely on the older side, but also a lot of people in their 30s and 40s. Poll workers attend a two-hour training that is very similar to the presiding judge training, but since poll workers have less responsibilities than the judges, there is less to cover. Presiding Judges are given a list of the poll workers that will be working at their precinct during the training, and are supposed to be in contact with the poll workers prior to Election Day. It does seem that for the most part, judges and poll workers do not know each other before Election Day, since a lot of people do not actually work in their own precinct.

Much of the training session was taken up by question and answer, and some venting by a lot of the judges. Our voter ID law does not seem to be very popular among the presiding judges and poll workers, so it will be interesting to see how this is applied. (You can read the Voter ID law here. Also the provisional ballot process, which allows anyone to fill out a ballot on election day regardless of registration status or if they are in the correct location, is complicated and seems to be fairly disliked by election workers. Most provisional ballots end up getting thrown out, but it does allow for a more open electoral process and is a good safeguard against inadvertently disenfranchising a voter because of a clerical error or some other problem. It is somewhat of a problem that lot of the judges, and poll workers as well, seem to only grudgingly accept their responsibility to apply the law as it is supposed to be, and will likely mean that the application of Voter ID laws and the allowance for filling out a provisional ballot is not going to be universally applied across New Mexico. But, I’ll get to see this first hand tomorrow, so hopefully I’m wrong!

In the week leading up to the election, county clerks begin delivering the voting machines  and polling booths to each individual precinct. In Bernalillo County, the Sunday before the election, presiding judges pick up the ballots and other administrative materials they need to set up their precinct on Election Day. All of this material is received in a locked ballot box, which they have to bring with them to the precinct. Polls open at 7am, so all judges and poll workers have to show up at 6am to set up the precinct. Setting up the precinct involves setting up tables, putting together the polling booths, turning on the voting machine, and setting up the Automark system. They also are required to post all the typical signs one sees at a precinct on Election Day. No campaigning is allowed within 100 feet of the polls, and the poll workers are required to determine where that designated 100 feet is, and to make sure throughout the day that that barrier is maintained.

Election Day Voting

Once polls open at 7am, voters identify themselves and sign off on the list of registered voters. Poll workers also have a second list that is checked off by a second poll worker, to ensure accuracy and help balance out the number of voters with the number of ballots cast at the end of the day. After a voter has identified themselves, they receive a ballot and a voter permit card. The voter permit card includes the ballot number and the voter’s number on the registration list. Each ballot is numbered, but this portion of the ballot is torn off prior to being given to the voter. The numbering of the ballots and the voter permit cards is necessary in order to make sure ballots are not lost and all ballots are accounted for at the end of the day. As long as the ballot stub with the number is torn off, there is no way to attach a permit card to a ballot after the fact to figure out how any individual person voted. After a person has filled out their ballot, the voter is supposed to put the ballot in the voting machine. Poll workers are allowed to help in inserting the ballot, but only if asked. Once a ballot has been given to a voter, no poll worker is supposed to touch it unless asked for help. This also applies to voters who make a mistake on their ballot and need a new one, those who vote provisionally, and those who fill out an in-lieu-of absentee ballot. However, I’ve heard there is wide variation in how poll workers handle ballots, and it has already happened to one person on our observation team where a spoiled ballot was “disappeared” by a poll worker in an early voting location, even though the voter him or herself is supposed to place it in a special envelope and seal it.

Closing the Polls

Polls close at 7pm. Poll workers are supposed to identify the last person in line who was there by 7pm and allow those still in line to vote. After all votes have been cast, poll workers print out the results from the voting machine, and start breaking down everything that had been set up at the beginning of the day. A number of different results tapes are printed out and mailed to different locations, including the county clerk, the secretary of state, and the district attorney. The results are also supposed to be posted at the precinct in a visible location so voters can come and see how their precinct voted. The ballots are taken out of the M-100 voting machine and placed into a locked ballot box. There are two keys to the ballot box, and once it is locked at the precinct, each key is mailed to a different location and cannot be opened without a court order. Any provisional ballots, in-lieu-of ballots, and absentee ballots that were handed in at a precinct are not supposed to be placed in the ballot box, but in previous elections they were, which really delayed the election process in New Mexico because a number of court orders were required to open up ballot boxes. In the trainings, the trainers really stressed not to put anything in the ballot box besides ballots from the M-100, so hopefully it is less of a problem this time around.

Throughout the day, there may be a number of ballots that were unreadable by the M-100. In some cases, voters made a mistake on their ballot and voted twice for a single race, and so the machine rejected the ballot. Voters are allowed to fill out a new ballot if they want to, but in some instances they refuse. These ballots are placed in a special slot in the M-100 machine and have to be hand-counted at the end of the night after the polls close. In this election, the hand-counting tally sheets are six pages long. Hand-counting ballots is extremely time consuming and much less accurate than machine counting. However, these ballots are counted at the precinct, and the results of any hand-counted ballots are delivered to the county clerk on election night as well. (They are, however, not posted at the precinct along with the machine results).

After the polls have been closed, the machine turned off, and all ballots counted, the poll workers have to balance out the number of voter signatures on the registration list, double-check it against the second registration list, and make sure the number of voters matches the number of ballots counted by the machine, plus hand-counted ballots. They also have make sure the number of voter permit cards matches the number of voters and ballots. Any remaining unused ballots are to be destroyed on site, after the numbered stubs are removed. The ballot stubs are saved to account for all ballots that were provided to each precinct. The poll worker trainings really did not emphasize saving the ballot stubs, and the printed training materials do not mention retaining these stubs. It is an important part of the process to make sure ballots do not end up missing.

The presiding judge is then required to take the ballots to the county clerk, where all the paperwork is checked over by county clerk employees to make sure everything is in order. In Albuquerque, there are drop zones across the city where judges take the ballots, but I think in most other places, the ballots are returned to one central location where the ballots are stored.

Feel free to ask questions in the comments, I'm sure I left out a lot!

 

Does Darren White Shave His Legs?

Not that it really matters I guess. But I certainly wouldn't expect it from the Bernalillo County sheriff who is running as a Republican to replace Heather Wilson in my old New Mexico district. White is the definition of Republican jerk and is about to have his hat handed to him by Martin Heinrich.

Over at Daily Kos, they put this picture up to highlight his ankle tattoo of Reagan's signature. Which is really creepy. And then I looked closer and saw a very smooth looking leg there.

Racism and the Construction of Hispano Identity in New Mexico

The recent comments by Bernalillo County, New Mexico, Republican chairman Fernando Cabezade Baca concerning why he thinks Latinos won't vote for Obama are outrageous :

"The truth is that Hispanics came here as conquerors. African-Americans came here as slaves. ... Hispanics consider themselves above blacks. They won't vote for a black president."

They are outrageous. But entirely expected to someone who has spent time in New Mexico. Not all Latinos think this way. But there is a very loud, if rather small, population of upper-class Hispanos who feel very strongly that this is true.

Moreover, these people engage in racism as part of their identity. They identify themselves explicitly as pure-blood Spanish, despite all evidence to the contrary. I taught the History of New Mexico twice as a graduate student. It's a dreadful class for many reasons. But one of the reasons is dealing with these students. There are usually one or two in each class. They very carefully separate themselves from the other, often poorer and at least partially Native American, students. They often insist the Spanish were benevolent rulers, turning conquistadors into heroes and denigrating Native American culture.

I believe that this was a direct response to the arrival of the United States in the 19th century. Business and local elites, seeking to retain their privileges in the face of hostile whites, declared themselves as white. By defining themselves as pure-blooded Spaniards, they could make a claim to whiteness in the late 19th century and thus keeping some grasp on political and economic power, even if they meant as junior partners to people more widely accepted as white at the time. This is not surprising to me. What is more interesting is the tenacity these ideas have. Almost inevitably in northern New Mexico wealthy Hispanics will define themselves this way. They are very proud of the pureblooded Spanish heritage, even if it is almost certainly totally false. They are equally dismissive of other races.

Dude, it's OK to be Mexican! Stop making false claims to a European heritage, particularly in a day and age when these claims do nothing for you politically.

Thus, it is not surprising that a leading Republican Latino in New Mexico would make such a claim about Obama. First, he really believes it. Second, he is racist as are a lot of the people he knows. There are lots of these supposed pure-blooded Spaniards who would never vote for a candidate from another race. They really think they are conquerors, the blacks are slaves, and the Indians are savages. They didn't just think that 100 years ago. They think it today.

New Mexico is a very strange place. Watching race work there was incredibly fascinating. Living there for 8 years gave me lots of exposure but I still don't think I understand all the bizarre subtleties of it. And while there might be some Latino racism that holds down their support for Obama (though the polls suggest this won't happen), it is different from what Cabeza de Baca is saying. He is racist in a very unique upper-class New Mexican way.

Historical Image of the Day

Meeting of the Albuquerque Optimists' Club, 1954