Toulouse Oliver is wrong about straight-party voting

COMMENTARY: There is an argument in favor of allowing straight-party voting. It’s one Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver repeats often these days: “…for working moms stopping at the polling place before picking up the kids, or for the elderly veteran who can’t stand at a voting booth for long, the straight-party option makes participating in an election easier,” she wrote in an op-ed last week.

“In fact, voters who choose to use the straight-party option will find their time in the voting booth cut in half, if not more,” the Democrat wrote in explaining why she’s bringing straight-party back as an option for voters in November’s general election.

But I strongly believe the arguments against straight-party voting substantially outweigh the benefits. There are other ways to make voting easier that don’t come with the insidiously deceptive motivation of protecting the system from voters.

As I wrote in March, when Toulouse Oliver first announced she was considering bringing back straight-party voting, “A system that encourages punching a party ticket instead of selecting individual candidates doesn’t empower voters. It protects dominant parties.” Democrats benefit more than Republicans in New Mexico, but both parties gain from the system that straight-party voting props up.

The Albuquerque Journal’s editorial board got it right this weekend:

Toulouse Oliver might try to wax poetic about busy single mothers, elderly voters and those with disabilities suddenly being able to cast a ballot because, well, now it’s fast and “easy,” and voters can always go down the ballot to change individual races, and candidates of each major party have won under straight-party voting.

But the fact remains straight-party voting benefits only political party leaders who want to marginalize voters to the right or the left, who don’t want voters to weigh candidates and issues on their merits, who are banking on voters putting all their ballot eggs in the basket of whomever they like at the top of the ticket.

They want voters to be content to let a political party essentially say “I’m from the government, trust me to make your decisions for you.”

By encouraging citizens to hand their votes in individual races to a political party, instead of making informed decisions themselves, straight-party voting runs counter to the very idea of democracy.

If New Mexico leaned red, it would generally be Republicans supporting straight-party voting and Democrats opposing it. But given the dominance of the Democratic Party here (46 percent of registered voters are Democrats, while 30 percent are Republicans), it’s no surprise a Democratic secretary of state is making a move to benefit her party while telling voters she’s doing it for them. Power protects power.

And it’s no surprise that pretty much everyone else is opposing the move. There’s a big coalition suing to stop it, in addition to a push by some county commissioners to pressure their clerks to refuse to implement straight-party voting.

Not all Democrats agree with Toulouse Oliver’s move. Two Democrats on the Doña Ana County Board of Commissioners voted with two Republicans on Tuesday in favor of a resolution asking their county clerk to not include a straight-party voting option on the county’s November ballot.

And state Sen. Jacob Candelaria, D-Albuquerque, tweeted his opposition last week.

“It’s not a matter of voter convenience; it’s a matter of partisan advantage in low information elections,” the senator tweeted. “Our country needs less vicious partisanship, not more.”

Candelaria later mentioned reforms he believes “will actually improve democracy and voter engagement”: online and same-day voter registration, allowing independents to vote in primaries, and establishing an independent redistricting commission.

I agree. In fact, I wrote in March that recent legislation to consolidate the many small, local elections each year for schools, cities and other governmental agencies into one, large election held every other November simplifies the voting process and empowers people.

“Starting in 2019, New Mexicans will have an easier time knowing when elections are held,” I wrote. “Because they have to keep track of one election instead of several each year, they’ll have an easier time learning about candidates and issues.”

That cuts time in the ballot box much more than straight-party voting. And it has the potential to bring greater attention to an election, making it easier for voters to learn about the candidates and issues on the ballot and make informed decisions.

Election consolidation hands more power to voters, which is why many school districts opposed it. They knew how to get tax increases approved pretty much every time under the old system. They feared what might happen when voter turnout in their bond elections increased.

Opposition from those who hold power is a sign that an election reform is good for people.

Other reforms we’ve already implemented in New Mexico increase absentee voting access for people who are visually impaired and allow online absentee ballot applications for people who want or need to fill out ballots at home. Like the elderly veteran and the working mom (or dad).

New Mexico has some of the more restrictive ballot-access laws in the nation for minor party and independent candidates. Any official who’s serious about increasing access to the ballot needs to take on his or her own party — and the other dominant party — to change that system. Opening taxpayer-funded primaries to all voters would be an important, voter-focused change.

Toulouse Oliver supports open primaries, which highlights an important point in this debate. Our secretary of state has generally been supportive of positive election reform during her time as the Bernalillo County clerk and now the state’s top elections official.

But she’s wrong about straight-party voting. We don’t have to sacrifice informed voting for ease and access, as the recent mail-in election in Las Cruces showed.

Under the new consolidated election law, any election held off the regular November schedule has to be conducted by mail. Las Cruces held the first, a property tax increase election that also included proposed changes to the city’s charter.

Turnout was epic for such a tiny election at over 25 percent. And voters appeared to study the questions on the ballot carefully. While all four tax-increase questions passed, some had much greater support than others. And one of the six charter questions about reforming the recall process failed.

Voters were paying attention. Systemic reform that let them fill out ballots in the comfort of their homes with Google at their disposal encouraged them to do so. That’s a legit election reform — and one of many good proposals Toulouse Oliver has supported in recent years.

Straight-party voting, on the other hand, accomplishes nothing except making sure more of Toulouse Oliver’s fellow Democrats win in November. And there’s no reason to believe it’s intended to do anything other than that.

Heath Haussamen is NMPolitics.net’s editor and publisher. Agree with his opinion? Disagree? NMPolitics.net welcomes your views. Learn about submitting your own commentary here.