New Mexico...

Daily Kos has a post today linking to the Reuters story that New Mexico isn't done counting yet.

The state took a month in 2000 to tally all the absentee and provisional ballots -- resulting in Al Gore beating Bush by 366 votes.

Bush has about 373,000 votes to 365,000 for Kerry with most of the ballots counted. Most media outlets have projected Bush winning the state's five electoral votes. The Secretary of State says that she won't be declaring a winner until November 23.

As pointed out on Daily Kos, the Reuters story doesn't include all of the juicy quotes from NM Sec of State Rebecca Vigil-Giron. In the Alter-net story Vigil-Giron defends the time the state is taking, saying that networks and other news organizations made a mistake to call other states when the counting of provisional ballots -- one of the developments from the 2002 Help America Vote Act that Congress passed -- hadn't even begun.

"The GOP is ignorant to the election process," says Vigil-Giron. "There's a process, there aren't instant results that give a state immediately. I'm surprised the media in other states called the election, it was not based on anything but exit polls. Unless they have a crystal ball to see the provisional ballots, the election isn't over."

This isn't a story about irregularities, no, but the counting of provisional ballots is a big question mark across the country. I heard that in Santa Fe County, 45% of provisional ballots were accepted.