Heath Haussamen / NMPolitics.net
A voting kiosk
COMMENTARY: Every summer in even-numbered years, New Mexico voters submit themselves to a partisan process of selecting the candidates that major political parties will place on the November ballot. While all New Mexicans pay the cost of these elections, those who refuse the limited labels that major political parties offer will be denied their right to vote.
That’s 270,000 registered independent voters, or 22 percent of the entire electorate.
They will receive no refund and have no recourse to address the misuse of their tax
dollars by private organizations, otherwise known as major political parties.
Courtesy photo
Abraham Sanchez
This is the legal question currently before the New Mexico Supreme Court. In a lawsuit filed last year, some voters and legal experts argue that the use of taxpayer dollars to fund the elections of private organizations is a violation of the anti-donation clause of the New Mexico Constitution. This is a spot-on analysis of this infraction.
Historically, before most New Mexicans were even born, the vast majority of voters were members of major political parties. This made closed primary elections a thoughtful way to increase access to government and limit the power of party bosses and elites.
Today, the situation is rapidly reversing as the majority of new voters, especially young people, choose not to identify with these parties. Our primary elections now favor a decreasing number of party loyalists while leaving out the newest generations of voters who are disheartened by self-serving political parties. Opening primary elections is a vital tool, especially for young voters, to shape a new path that shares power and increases participation.
As an election worker for over a dozen elections in Doña Ana County, including two closed primaries, I’ve come to understand how wasteful these elections are.
Primary day in New Mexico is a scramble of clerk’s staff spending most of their energy and time enforcing the rules of the major parties to limit who can participate. In order to vote in this election a voter must have been registered with a major political party at least 28 days before the election. This leads to a massive number of provisional ballots issued to voters who don’t meet this requirement and increases the wait time for everyone at the polls.
After election day, these ballots require intense auditing by election staff to determine if they should count. Unfortunately, the vast majority are disqualified because voters weren’t registered with a major party before the election. To conclude this wasteful process, bulk mailings are sent out to notify these provisional voters that their ballots didn’t count. Of course, this entire process is funded by all New Mexico voters.
Even worse is the lingering effect these elections have on our voter database. On primary election day, unaffiliated voters must complete a voter registration form, including the selection of a major political party, in order to be issued a provisional ballot. After the election, clerk’s offices are required to update voters registrations from these forms. Even though the majority of provisional ballots have been disqualified, a voter’s newly “chosen” party is updated in the database.
This artificially inflates the membership of major political parties and misrepresents our state’s changing electorate.
The major parties happily accept the membership of these voters even though their ballots have been disqualified. This further entrenches a limited and costly approach to government.
Polling from Common Cause New Mexico has found that 70 percent of New Mexicans want open primaries. It should be the role of the Legislature to respond to this overwhelming support of the people and fix our elections by passing the open primaries legislation before it.
If they ignore it, as they have done in previous sessions, it’s long past due for the Supreme Court to step in and act. Democratic elections in New Mexico will not be possible until all voters are included and allowed to vote.
Abraham Sanchez is a resident of Las Cruces, a board member of New Mexico Open Primaries, and a member of the Doña Ana County Clerk’s Election Advisory Council. Agree with his opinion? Disagree? NMPolitics.net welcomes your views. Learn about submitting your own commentary here.