Dec. 16—SANTA FE — New Mexico officially closed the books on the 2024 election cycle Monday, as state officials certified the results of two races that had triggered automatic vote recounts.
Neither recount changed the initial results of the races, Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver said during a meeting of the State Canvassing Board.
In one of the races, Republican Catherine Cullen defeated Democrat Michelle Sandoval by a 133-vote margin for the vacant House District 57 seat based in Rio Rancho.
Cullen gained one additional vote during the recount, while Sandoval picked up four additional votes, Toulouse Oliver said.
The result means Democrats will enter the 60-day legislative session next month with a 44-26 majority over Republicans in the House of Representatives. They had entered the election cycle with a 45-25 advantage.
In the other race that triggered a recount under state law, Republican David Reagor defeated Democrat Denise Derkacs in a race for a Los Alamos County council seat.
State-paid recounts had been ordered last month in the two races, under a state law that calls for them to be conducted in races with narrow vote margins.
Specifically, the law requires votes to be retallied when the margin separating the two top candidates in a race is less than 1%. The margin is different for statewide races and races in more heavily-populated counties.
The State Canvassing Board is made up of the secretary of state, the chief justice of the state Supreme Court and the governor, and is tasked with certifying statewide election results after county clerks conduct their post-election canvas.
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham was excused from Monday’s meeting, leaving Toulouse Oliver and Supreme Court Chief Justice David Thomson to vote on certifying the results of the two races that featured automatic recounts.
Under the final certified results for New Mexico’s 2024 general election, a total of 928,290 votes were cast statewide.
That represents about 67.1% voter turnout — down slightly from four years ago but above turnout levels from the 2012 and 2016 presidential election years.
