A Week Later, New Mexico Is Still Counting School-Fund Votes.

Gov. Bill Richardson has already declared victory on the issue, but a week after New Mexico's special election it remains unclear whether voters narrowly approved his proposal to increase payouts for education from the $7 billion Land Grant Permanent Fund.

Amendment 2 to the state constitution would add about $74 million to the roughly $400 million that the fund already provides for education each year. The amendment was one of two questions on the Sept. 23 ballot. The first -- creating a cabinet-level secretary of education position that transfers power from the state Board of Education to the governor -- was approved by a comfortable margin.

The final outcome on the permanent fund amendment will remain in doubt until Oct. 14, when the state's canvassing board provides an official vote count. Unofficial results reported by the New Mexico secretary of state's office showed Amendment 2 losing by 23 votes out of more than 183,000 cast. However, unofficial results from the Associated Press indicated the measure would pass by 169 votes after votes from populous Bernalillo County were added.

That was enough for Richardson to declare victory on both proposals Saturday.

"It looks extremely promising, and I'm declaring victory for New Mexico's children, New Mexico's schools and New Mexico education," said Richardson, who pushed the measure through the Legislature and campaigned for it in the weeks before the election.

Two days after the election, Amendment 2 was losing by two votes in the AP's unofficial count, a margin that grew slightly by Friday. But the trend reversed when Bernalillo County counted nearly 600 provisional and in-lieu-of ballots. ...