New Mexico’s top election official: ‘Overwhelmed’ same-day voter registration system caused delays
About 70 people in line, mostly students, waiting to register to vote at Corbett Center Student Union on the New Mexico State University campus. People toward the front of the line said they had been waiting for about three hours so far. (Photo by Leah Romero / Source New Mexico)
New Mexico Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver said a week after Election Day that same-day voter registration was significantly delayed at polling places across the state, acknowledging the problem was worse and more widespread than her office previously had.
Toulouse Oliver described the issues Tuesday during a hearing with lawmakers, where they asked her about the election. Their constituents plus nonpartisan voter advocacy groups had reported hours-long waits on the final day of voting in the high-turnout election. Some advocates said frustrated voters leaving without casting ballots.
State Sen. Antoinette Sedillo López (D-Albuquerque) questioned Toulouse Oliver about the long lines.
“I went and made a big point in my district to say same day registration is available,” she said. “So I was just wondering what plans you have to fix that.”
Local clerks and the secretary of state’s office were inundated with voters and same-day registration requests. Toulouse Oliver responded to say that, by the time the state had added computer server space to speed up the process, county clerks were already behind in the queue
“We could have never envisioned something (like this) happening. Now we know it can happen, so it’s a good thing,” she said. “So many people came out and participated, but it did slow the process down.”
She said her office and county clerks now know what their “homework” is for the next election, which is to prevent something like this from happening again, though she didn’t offer specifics on how to do that.
Presidential races on ballots typically draw the biggest crowds during U.S. elections. In the 2022 midterm elections, about 714,000 voters cast ballots. This year, a little more than 925,000 people voted.
It’s not clear exactly how many voters encountered delays when trying to register on Election Day. Many of those voters may have filed provisional ballots instead, which is what clerks and the state encouraged them to do while their applications were pending.
How many of those provisional ballots were filed won’t be known until county officials process them during vote canvassing – the process of making sure every valid vote counts – beginning next week.
If the state’s most populous county is any indication, the number of people forced to vote provisionally is significant: About 9,000 people attempted to register and then vote on Election Day. About 1,000 of them had to file provisional ballots, according to Nathan Jaramillo, the administrator for Bernalillo County’s Bureau of Elections.
Observers noted delays
At least two nonpartisan election observer groups documented delays with New Mexico’s same-day registration process in at least 15 counties, with some voters still in line an hour after polls closed.
Observers with Common Cause said an outage occurred early in the morning, during which no same-day registration applications were processed. Then, for the rest of the day, poll workers struggled to keep up with a backlog of applications amid slow processing times, said Mason Graham, spokesperson for Common Cause, which sent about 100 observers to sites across the state.
Secretary of State spokesperson Alex Curtas attributed the challenge on Election Day to an influx of same-day registrations, acknowledging a slow-down, and said more servers were added to help the process.
The Secretary of State’s office did not characterize it as an outage until after the election.
Jaramillo, the election administrator for Bernalillo County, said he will ask for additional grant funds and an increased budget to hire more workers to register people for future elections, and ask the Secretary of State redevelop the website to make the registration process smoother.
“I think we could use this as a learning mechanism in the future to ensure we’re aligned in the event of an issue, preemptively, to avoid that confusion,” Jaramillo said.
More than 26,000 voters registered to vote in New Mexico on Election Day, according to data from the Secretary of State’s Office. That’s about as many people who registered during all of the early voting period which began about a month before Election Day.
Observe New Mexico Elections is a polling observer group funded by the nonprofit Carter Center, which former President Jimmy Carter founded, sent about 170 observers to about 150 voting locations on Election Day.
The group reported voters in at least 14 counties waited between 10 minutes and more than two hours. Some voters left without voting, according to a news release from the group. Some voters were told to come back later to finish registering or to go to the county clerk’s office to finish the task.
Chaparral, a colonia of more than 16,000 people, in both Doña Ana and Otero counties, also saw long lines for same-day registration.
When polls closed, there were 30 to 40 people waiting in line outside as temperatures dipped into the mid 50s, said Maty Gonzalez, a community organizer intern for NM Comunidades en Acción y de Fé, a progressive interfaith group, who lives in the community.
“People left the line because they couldn’t stand the cold,” she said.
Otero County Clerk Robyn Holmes said, cited record turnout in the county and a lack of preparation for the crowds. “We are not used to that many people registering to vote on Election Day, so we didn’t have enough ports to bring in more laptops,” she said. “It wasn’t just Chaparral, it was all over our county.”
Graham, with Common Cause, said his group is considering reforms to propose during the 2025 state legislative session to prevent the issues on Tuesday from occurring again.
“I think there’s probably some technological advancements that might need to happen, and of course, that’s going to cost money,” he said.