A judge has ordered the Santa Fe County Clerk to allow registered voters who requested absentee ballots but have not yet received them to vote in the early-voting process.

But because early voting ends at 6 p.m. today, the order's effect will be short-lived.

State District Judge Jim Hall on Thursday granted the order requested by the New Mexico Federation of Labor, an umbrella organization for state labor unions.

The federation's motion was backed by affidavits from Susie A. Trujillo-Romero, a Santa Fe letter carrier with the U.S. Postal Service, and Marlene Foster, an attorney with the New Mexico Public Defender Department, who both said they had sought absentee ballots but had not received them and had received conflicting advice from the County Clerk's Office.

Hall's order requires Santa Fe County Clerk Valerie Espinosa and Santa Fe County Director of Elections Denise Lamb to allow people who requested absentee ballots but have not yet received them to vote by the early-voting process so that their votes can be counted immediately.

Otherwise, Lamb said, these people would have cast in-lieu-of-absentee ballots that would have been kept separate from the other ballots and not counted until 48 hours after polls close to eliminate the possibility of double voting.

Lamb said Hall's order "gives new meaning to the phrase 'Vote early and vote often,' doesn't it?"

But Daniel and Jane Yohalem, lawyers who brought the case on behalf of the New Mexico Federation of Labor, said the order was necessary to stop the county bureau of elections from constantly changing the rules.

"Initially, they said they couldn't vote at all until the day before Election Day," Daniel Yohalem said. "Then they said, 'Well, we'll let you vote now, but you're going to vote a provisional ballot.' Then the last thing, just when we came into court, they announced they were going to let people vote an in-lieu-of-absentee ballot. But the judge was just dealing with all of the things they were doing which were not in compliance with the secretary of state, who said you got to be able to vote early."

A record number of New Mexicans already have cast their ballots in early voting — at least 237,682 through Thursday. In the 2004 general election, 236,340 cast early in-person votes.

State Bureau of Elections Director Gerald Gonzales supported the federation's position against that of the Santa Fe County Clerk in court.

Hall's order also requires the county clerk to count the votes by the affected voters immediately and to cancel or "spoil" the absentee ballots that had not been received.

While Lamb maintained the order's main effect would be to allow these votes to be counted more quickly, Yohalem said it also ensures against voter fraud.

"We were all very concerned about their security," Yohalem said. "It wasn't clear to us what was going to happen to those ballots. This way, there's no doubt. The ballot gets voted. The absentee ballot gets destroyed ... and it's all much, much tighter in terms of fraud protection and security."

Hall stopped short of extending early voting through Sunday, as requested by the Yohalem. Lamb said this would have been impossible because clerk officials need Sunday to "run the rosters" to get ready for Election Day.

Early voting continues from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. today at the Santa Fe County Courthouse and five satellite sites around the county. The Clerk's Office in the courthouse at 102 Grant Ave. will be open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday for people who applied for an absentee ballot but have not received one to vote via a replacement absentee ballot — but not via early voting. Voters who encounter problems on Tuesday will be allowed to cast provisional ballots.

Lamb said the problems addressed by the lawsuit were largely caused by door-to-door campaigners who handed out absentee-ballot applications.

"We really need to decide if we're going to be ... a vote-by-mail state like Oregon or if we're going to stop absentee convenience voting or maybe restrict it to senior citizens or disabled voters," she said. "The administrative problems with these policies ... cost the taxpayers a lot of money."

Contact Tom Sharpe at 986-3080 or tsharpe@sfnewmexican.com.