Valencia County voting machine error found during election canvass

Valencia County officials uncovered a voting machine error that added votes to races from nonexistent ballots during the 2025 election, then corrected the tally in the county canvass. The discrepancy came up at a Valencia County Commission canvass meeting, where local election results were reviewed before certification.

KOAT identified the problem as a voting discrepancy in Valencia County’s 2025 election. In a related post, KOAT said a voting machine experienced an error on Election Day and added votes to races, and that county officials later corrected the issue.

The key safeguard in Valencia County was the canvass itself. That post-election review is where commissioners and election officials compare returns and reconcile the numbers before the results are finalized. In this case, the mismatch was found during that process, not left to linger in the certified count.

The available reporting ties the problem to machine tabulation, not to voters creating ballots that should have counted. The error produced votes tied to ballots that did not exist in the county’s official tally, and officials corrected the discrepancy after it was discovered.

That matters in a county where confidence in the count depends on visible checks, not trust alone. New Mexico Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver’s office maintains a public Rumor vs. Reality voter-information page, part of the state’s effort to answer election questions and push back on misinformation with official guidance. In practice, that kind of transparency is only as strong as the local procedures behind it, including canvass review, commission oversight and correction of mismatched totals before the next election cycle moves forward.