Gov. Susana Martinez has admitted signing an absentee ballot request for a school board election on behalf of her husband, Chuck Franco. The Republican governor told the Albuquerque Journal that her husband asked her to request a ballot for him for the January 2011 election but she had no intention of deceiving election officials or casting his ballot.
The signing was investigated at the time by Secretary of State Dianna Duran, also a Republican, after it caught the eye of the Dona Ana County clerk. The secretary of state's chief of staff Ken Ortiz says Duran's office found no wrongdoing on Martinez's part.
New Mexico law currently requires that an absentee ballot request be signed by the actual voter, not a spouse or parent.
Copyright 2013 The Associated Press.