Ack! Again Ack!

Albuquerque is of two minds. Republican Wilson barely leads Democrat Madrid:

... But their fate is bound up in two sets of uncounted ballots totaling more than 5,500 votes.

One group consists of more than 2,000 ballots rejected by the ballot-reading machines. They were being hand-counted by weary poll workers this morning.

A second set includes the ballots of 2,698 provisional voters and another 1,058 who cast "in lieu of" votes. Those probably won't start to be counted until Thursday, according to the Bernalillo County Clerk's Office.

With 461 of 465 precincts reporting, unofficial results from the Associated Press gave Wilson 101,305 votes to Madrid's 100,257.

Remembering old times:

The last Democrat to represent the Albuquerque area was Thomas Morris, who was first elected in 1958 to the House, when the state's seat was chosen at-large. The seat was later divided into two positions, and a third seat was added in 1983.

Morris, 87, served until 1969, when Manuel Lujan Jr. was elected to the district.

Morris spent $11,600 on his first election and said Monday that he can't believe what the candidates are spending now. It took a day to fly to Washington. And the way to get the vote out was "by talking to people, and by having their neighbors talk to other people."

"Those were the days," he said.