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Problems with voting machines are surfacing as the primaries inch closer.

Colorado's secretary of state on Tuesday decertified three of the four types of voting machines the state uses, deeming them unreliable.

And our neighbor's decision hits close to home. Two of the machines play an integral role in New Mexico elections — they count the ballots.

The New Mexico Secretary of State's Office says Colorado's decision will not affect the Feb. 5 presidential caucus, but it is looking into the issue to ensure a smooth election.

State officials tested and certified the M100 and M650 tabulating machines two months ago, said James Flores, spokesman for the Secretary of State's Office.

"As far as the voter machines here, we're good with them, and they're ready to go in the primaries," Flores said. "We do have an interest in them now that Colorado has decided to decertify them."

New Mexico moved away from electronic voting machines in 2006 and now uses paper ballots, which rely on the M100 and M650 to count the ballots.

Election Systems and Software, the company that makes the machines, said its machines were decertified based off new requirements asked by the state of Colorado.

Colorado's secretary of state announced in March that the state was adopting new rules for testing electronic voting machines.

Colorado's Secretary of State's Office decertified the machines for a number of reasons. The office cited the machines' inability to process more than 4,000 ballots as a major factor in its decision.

The state mandates that they are able to process 10,000.

The machines also failed to process ballots with more than one page, and they inaccurately processed folded ballots, according to the office.

Flores said New Mexico's certification process is similar, but he did not know the specifics.

Election Systems and Software is working with Colorado to address the issues, said Amanda Brown, a spokeswoman for the company.

Every county in the state of New Mexico uses M100 and M650 scanning devices. If the state decided to decertify the machines, ballots would need to be counted by hand.

But there is no word on how New Mexico will act on the decision.

"We're not going to make any assumptions," Flores said. "We're not going to lead anybody in any particular direction. We're going to do our homework before we say anything else."

The Secretary of State's Office must look into the issue to ensure a fair election, said Scott Darnell, spokesman for the state's Republican party.

"The last thing we need is unreliable or faulty machines in the election process," he said. "It's not working for voters. I don't believe we have an election system that has any degree of integrity to it."

These are not the first complaints about the ES&S voting machines.

It was reported in early November that San Francisco officials had to hand count more than 80,000 ballots because the company's machines failed. As a result, the election results were not in until early December.