Voting snafu resolved. Kind of.
Letitia Montoya was supposed to be Your Voice for Your Vote. A person who, according to her campaign Web site, "learned from her parents at an early age that our right to vote is the most precious of all our American freedoms." But at least one of her mentors might need a tutorial himself.
Montoya finished a distant fourth in the June 6 Democratic primary election for secretary of state. Leading
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up to the election, Montoya told newspapers (including SFR) that her father, Gilbert Montoya, Sr., had been disenfranchised from voting in the Santa Fe municipal election last March. It was evidence, Letitia Montoya suggested, of the many flaws in the New Mexico voting system.
According to Denise Lamb, chief deputy clerk of the Santa Fe County Bureau of Elections, Gilbert Montoya dramatically voiced his own disapproval on June 2, a few days before the primary election.
"He came into the office and made kind of a scene," Lamb says. "There were a lot of people in line at the time and he was saying, very loudly, that we had purged him from the voter list for the city election. I decided to look at it closer to see if we had made a mistake and what we could do to correct it if that was the case."
Turns out the mistake rested with Gilbert Montoya, who has said that he arrived at Precinct 27-his usual polling place-for the March 7 city election only to be told he wasn't on the voter list. According to Bureau of Election records, that's because he was actually registered to vote in Precinct 22.
"I guess he just forgot that he had changed his registration so that, when he went to Precinct 27 to vote, he wasn't on the list," Lamb says.
Voter registration forms show that Gilbert Montoya registered to vote on Feb. 1, 1994, listing his address as 818 Dunlap St., which is in Precinct 27. On Nov. 20, 2003, he changed his registration to 329 Rosario Hill, which is in Precinct 22.
"They have since figured out that he was registered in a different location but the day of the election they couldn't pinpoint where he was located at," Letitia Montoya says. "If they would have said, 'You're located at [Precinct] 22, so you need to go to this other location,' it would have been a lot better, because he ended up not being able to vote."
But an SFR examination of voter records revealed a couple of peculiarities involving Gilbert Montoya's change in registration. On his Nov. 20, 2003 registration form, the first three letters of Gilbert Montoya's Social Security number were changed from "525" to "527," while other details-including his birth date and signature-remained the same.
At the time, Letitia Montoya was a candidate for state senator representing Senate District 25 (she lost in the 2004 primary). Senate District 25 encompasses voting in Precinct 22 (where Gilbert Montoya changed his registration to), not Precinct 27, even though the two addresses are located little more than a mile apart.
"I don't think that he was intentionally trying to cheat or anything," Lamb says. "I think he just filled out an application in that district so that he could sign his daughter's nomination sheet."
"I couldn't tell you why he was registered over there," Letitia Montoya says, adding that her father did own a house at 329 Rosario Hill but sold it about a year ago.
On April 26, Gilbert Montoya changed his registration back to 818 Dunlap St. The first three numbers of his Social Security number also returned to "525." Gilbert Montoya welcomed a reporter into his home-at 818 Dunlap St.-but declined to comment, saying the issue has been resolved.
