It could be days until Democratic voters know who won New Mexico's presidential caucus.

But the lawyers, the finger-pointing and the provisional ballot counting are already kicking into overdrive.

And while all 21 other Super Tuesday states had winners in the matchup between U.S. Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, in New Mexico, the candidates were separated by 153 votes.

With 180 of 184 of precincts reporting Wednesday, Clinton had 64,530 votes compared with 64,377 for Obama, according to preliminary results. Each had roughly 48 percent of the vote.

After the Democratic Party-run caucus suffered ballot shortages, long lines and questions about whether the party was prepared to run the election, Gov. Bill Richardson said state voters need to decide "whether they want to preserve their early voice in the process in the future and what form it should take."

Amid the intrigue, party staff and volunteers set out Wednesday to begin counting 16,870 provisional ballots. While they got a process in place that all sides could agree to, the counting and verifying wasn't scheduled to begin until this morning.

The party's deadline to certify the results is Feb. 15.

"That's going to get a full canvass," Democratic Party chairman Brian Colón said. "We're going to be as deliberative as possible."

The provisionals — ballots cast because a voter's name wasn't on a precinct list, for example, or because they didn't go to the right polling place — made up just part of the roughly 155,000 ballots cast.

The huge turnout, compared with 105,000 in the 2004 presidential caucus here — seemed to be a blessing, and a curse.

"We didn't anticipate 16,000 provisional ballots," Colón said, adding he took "full responsibility" for not having enough regular ballots. He earlier had predicted a turnout of 30,000 to 40,000.

Colón also acknowledged the long lines, something he said came in part because the party consolidated polling places, although he said there were about 20 more sites for voting this time than in 2004.

He said polling places were consolidated for financial reasons. Colón said the budget this year was about $250,000. He didn't know what the budget was in 2004.

While Colón maintained an optimistic attitude about the election, and about getting all the provisionals counted, he admitted there were some breakdowns in communication — including in Rio Arriba County. "We just had trouble communicating with the county (chairwoman) last night," he said.

Colón is referring to a situation where results from three Rio Arriba sites were not reported Tuesday night to the party's Web site because they were incomplete, only containing results for Clinton and Obama, and not for candidates who had dropped out of the race. The ballot boxes stayed overnight with a polling site manager and were turned over to Theresa Martinez, the Rio Arriba County Party chairwoman Wednesday morning.

State Sen. Richard Martinez, D-Española, Theresa's husband, said his wife got custody of the boxes Wednesday morning and then turned them over to the state party.

"The site managers locked them and they kept them and they took them to my wife (Wednesday) morning," said Sen. Martinez, who has openly endorsed Clinton.

Colón said the situation in Rio Arriba was similar to what happened in a majority of the state's rural areas. "The bottom line is the site managers were to call in the numbers until they could get them to the party," he said. "We had places like in Chama where with the amount of snow on the ground, they just weren't going to drive to Española or Abiquiú."

Colón said the party planned to post complete results from Rio Arriba County on its Web site by Wednesday night or this morning.Officials were still working to tally results from one precinct in Sandoval County.

Later on the Senate floor, Martinez joked about the situation. "The media earlier was assuming I had delivered Rio Arriba, and I told them I really wish I could take the credit for that, but they had me confused with Senator Emilio Naranjo ... ," he sad, referring to a longtime Northern New Mexico Democratic leader. "He delivered Rio Arriba. I've been stuck here with the Senate."

Meanwhile, at the REDW firm in Albuquerque where party staff and volunteers were to start counting the provisional ballots, Trevor FitzGibbon with the Obama campaign said all sides wanted to agree on a framework. "The campaigns and the New Mexico Democratic Party are working together to make sure that the system for processing the provisional ballots is transparent and fair, and that all New Mexicans who voted have their vote counted," he said.

Lawyers from both campaigns were present, observers said, recalling the drawn-out vote counting in the 2006 congressional race between U.S. Rep. Heather Wilson, R-N.M., and then-Attorney General Patricia Madrid.

Richardson, who ended his presidential bid Jan. 10, applauded the large turnout. "That said, I am deeply disturbed by the reports that problems and delays at polling locations may have kept people from voting," he said, adding he expressed his frustration to Colón and "told him that I stand ready to help the party in any way that I can."

Colón said he learned lessons from the election — and would do a few things differently. "I would do my very best to make sure to have more volunteers and sites and better funding," he said. "When a person walks away from the polls, it saddens me and it's unfortunate."

The widespread problems gave state Republicans plenty of fodder to criticize the Democrats. "There was only one race on the caucus ballots (Tuesday), and yet, New Mexicans again had to wade through election mismanagement and failure to take part in the process," said state GOP spokesman Scott Darnell. "The Democratic Party was in control of yesterday's election, and in a number of ways, their election administration failed. This is no different than the failures and mismanagement we have seen from elected Democrats throughout New Mexico's election history."

"Enough with the excuses," he added. "Democrats should begin to manage elections properly in this state, or voters should start putting Republicans in charge."

Staff writer Steve Terrell and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Contact Kate Nash at 986-3036 or knash@sfnewmexican.com. Read her blog, Green Chile Chatter