If nothing else, Secretary of State Dianna Duran deserves credit for getting to the bottom of that age-old, oft-repeated New Mexico folk tale about dead people voting. Not so much, it turns out.

And Duran can prove it, too. Once in office, she and her staff have taken the state's voter list, torn it apart, put it back together and in the end, found almost no voter fraud in New Mexico. From the 64,000 voter registration records she once referred to state police as possible cases of voter fraud, we are down to 100-plus voters apparently registered illegally. Of those "illegally" registered, 19 possible non-citizens might have cast a ballot they should not have. Another 641 people, now believed to be deceased, remain on the rolls, although there is scant evidence they are voting. That's out of 1.1 million registered voters, by the way.

Duran is no dummy, either. She knows that after her loud shouts about crooked voters, the investigation has turned up next to nothing (we're waiting, by the way, to find out how much it has cost). No wonder, then, that her interim report contains a strike at possible critics: "To those who say that vote fraud (if it does exist) is 'insignificant,' our answer is that no instance of vote fraud, or ineligible registration, or ineligible voting, is now, or ever will be 'insignificant' to this office. Every single vote cast by an ineligible voter cancels and invalidates a vote cast by a legal voter, and leaves that law-abiding citizen completely disenfranchised. It may also alter the outcome of an election. That is the sober reality of the electoral system."

And she's right. No one wants ineligible voters casting ballots. Voting is as precious a right as we have and must be protected. Just as clearly, though, citizens must not be disenfranchised. Make no mistake, disenfranchisement is the goal — that's the math Republicans like. Here's how it works: more voters and bigger turnouts favor Democrats; fewer voters and smaller turnouts favor Republicans. It's a long-acknowledged strategy of Republican operatives, then, to restrict access to the polls. Democrats, meanwhile, want to register everyone and increase voter turnout. It's how the parties roll.

Currently, Republican-led legislatures in states across the country are seeking to increase identification requirements for voting. It sounds reasonable — show a photo ID to vote, who could object? The real-life consequence is that such mandates disproportionately affect minority voters. Voting rights litigator Judith Browne -Dianis writes in a recent U.S. News & World column that "at least 21 million Americans do not have the requisite ID: 25 percent of African-Americans, 15 percent of those earning less than $35,000, 18 percent of citizens age 65 or older, and 20 percent of voters ages 18 to 29." Those, of course, are groups that tend to vote for Democrats. Other new laws make it more difficult for college students to vote, reduce early voting and otherwise limit ballot access. Making it harder to vote is a coordinated effort across the United States.

As much as we support preventing voter fraud, we also support the right of citizens to vote without undue roadblocks. The days of poll taxes and literacy tests, thankfully, are over. Because as wrong as it is for one vote to be cast illegally, it's just as wrong for qualified and legal voters to be turned away. The goal of this investigation was to identify enough problems with New Mexico's elections to justify laws requiring citizens to jump through hoops to vote. That didn't happen, but let's thank Duran anyway. Without meaning to, Secretary of State Dianna Duran has restored faith in New Mexico's electoral system.