Trying to get one’s arms around the nature of New Mexico politics can bend even the sharpest political watchers over their keyboards in frustration. It’s not easy, but it’s always interesting, to say the least.

It’s especially challenging for someone like me, a twenty-year removed transplant from Boston. You’d think twenty years would afford plenty of time to get a handle on these things, but in many ways I feel I’m just getting under the surface.

I’ve considered New Mexico politics as a columnist for the Albuquerque Journal (and the now defunct Albuquerque Tribune before that), as well as co-host of New Mexico In Focus, our weekly political round table on KNME, the PBS affiliate in Albuquerque, for some time. Before that as a highly interested, if often times puzzled observer.

I mention that to put into context my experience working with the crew from the NewsHour for a piece on voting issues in New Mexico and our collective experience putting together a segment on the preparations for Nov. 4 here. In many ways, I may as well have been one of the crew; new to the state and working hard to crack the code on just why elections here seem to be so hard to get right.

At times I found myself seeing things with new eyes. Particularly during some reporting we shot out in Grants, a small town of around 9,000 people about eighty miles west of Albuquerque. I knew this was going to be interesting when we passed a good-sized hand made Obama sign along historic Route 66, the main street through Grants. The fact that the Obama campaign had staff with D.C. experience in a tiny office working this small district was startling. Grants?

This was going to be a much different New Mexico experience, in Grants of all places.

We interviewed Clemente Sanchez, a small business development director who, in the last cycle, lost a primary bid for a State Senate seat (running on the Democratic ticket) by five votes. That’s tough enough. Add to that a box containing 182 votes, which mysteriously disappeared in transit from a polling location and the plot, as they say, thickened. To this day not a soul, the county clerk or anyone else, knows where those votes ended up.

Clemente’s situation is certainly not unique in the American politic. Many have walked in his shoes. But what struck me in our time with him is how he embodies a rising sentiment here. Clemente is not a bitter man. Frustrated surely, and at this point he claims to have lost faith in the system, but he’s not looking for revenge. Or a lawsuit. He just wants clarity, an answer to why these things seem to happen here with startling regularity.

In my day-to-day interactions, the e-mails I receive from the Journal column and the show, I can tell you he is not alone.

For many in the state, being in the national spotlight for failing to get votes counted in a timely, accurate manner, has had its day. New Mexicans have had it. It’s not funny, romantic, quirky, or any other attribute. There’s been voting day mayhem that pre-dates my time here by a long stretch, but the change in attitude started in 2000, when the state endured an agonizing wait for a final tally that (eventually) found that Al Gore had beaten George W. Bush. Slightly. As in less than 400 votes statewide. Luckily, Florida was the bigger story.

In 2004, more than 20,000 statewide ballots did not have votes checked for president, an astounding number of under votes, given the amount of total votes cast. President Bush won that cycle by 6,000 votes.

In between, seemingly every primary and congressional cycle never seemed to go quite right. More accurately, they all seemed to go quite wrong. Long lines, not enough polling stations, running out of paper ballots, you name it.

Which brings me back to the NewsHour and our work in New Mexico this week.

My sense is the pessimism is starting to lift, if ever so slightly. Not necessarily among those close to the fire, like Clemente Sanchez, but with voters themselves. While the jury is still out, and will be until Nov. 4, there’s a “benefit of the doubt” surfacing. Folks seem willing to give it another try, particularly with paper ballots. More money has been committed, bigger staffs armed with more training are ready, county clerks promise plenty of paper ballots, and an increase in polling locations for most counties seem to be the norm.

Will it be enough? At this point New Mexicans are willing to wait and see now that there’s a sense of better planning. The proof, however, will be in the execution.

Given the historical nature of this presidential election (and all three congressional seats and a Senate seat are at stake here as well), New Mexicans are not anxious to be in that spotlight again. Many eyes are watching closely. No doubt Clemente Sanchez will be among them.