Will protections for election workers, expanded voting rights become reality in New Mexico?

EDITOR'S NOTE: This story is part of a comprehensive guide to voting rights across the U.S. and in Puerto Rico. 

New Mexico has enacted multiple changes in recent years to make voting easier and more secure, including establishing same-day registration, consolidating local elections and requiring secure containers where voters can drop off ballots any time of the day or night.

But advocates say there is more to be done. Among more recent pushes has been an effort to increase voter access to felons when they are let out of prison and to safeguard the security of election workers. Safety has become a particular concern as the same forces that have roiled election politics across the country have caused turmoil in a handful of mostly rural counties where conspiracy theories about voting systems have proliferated among conservatives with former President Donald Trump's false claims of a stolen 2020 election.

Doña Ana County Clerk Amanda López Askin, a Democrat, said she believes misinformation is the biggest thing currently imperiling voter access.

“I think one of the biggest threats to democracy right now are election deniers that continue to beat the drum of fraud without offering anything and then having no consequence for that,” the clerk said. “And the consequence for people who are on the fence about participating anyway, hear them and are taking what they say seriously.”

New Mexico, which gained statehood in 1912, was behind several Western states in not giving women the right to vote until 1920 when the 19th Amendment was enacted. And Native Americans living on reservations were not allowed to vote in the state until a federal court interceded in 1948.

The state has made strides since then. MIT’s Elections Performance Index ranked the state ninth in election administration in 2018 — though its ranking dropped to 25th in 2020.

López Askin said access could still be improved through funding for the creation of voter information guides on candidates in state and local elections and other ballot questions, removal of barriers to vote for convicted felons upon release from prison and making Election Day a state holiday to boost turnout.

Pandemic ushers in changes to New Mexico's absentee voting

In the beginning months of the COVID-19 pandemic, the New Mexico Supreme Court rejected a request from 27 county clerks to conduct the state's June primary election primarily by mail. Instead, the court unanimously ruled that clerks should encourage voting absentee and could mail absentee ballot applications to all registered major party voters.

Following a special legislative session in June 2020, New Mexico enacted temporary changes to its election law due to the pandemic, which expanded the availability of absentee voting by allowing county clerks to mail applications to all registered voters and prohibited the health-related closure or consolidation of polling places on Native American lands without tribal consent. The changes automatically sunset at the end of 2020.

Access for former felons' voting rights remains a fight

In New Mexico, voters who have been convicted of a felony lose the right to vote until after they’ve completed their court-ordered prison sentence and completed any term of parole or probation. This includes federal, state and out-of-state convictions. Once they’ve completed their sentences, a convicted felon can register once more to vote.

In recent years, state legislation has been proposed that would allow people with felony convictions to be given voting rights again once their incarceration ends — regardless of parole or probation conditions being completed, certain paperwork being filed or fines being paid — but those attempts have been unsuccessful.

“The data tells me that when (formerly incarcerated people are) able to vote, and they feel like they are part of their community, they are less likely to return to incarceration,” López Askin said. “And I think that's really pivotal.”

Mario Jimenez, of Common Cause New Mexico, said his group supports allowing the temporarily incarcerated to vote from jail since they have only been charged with a crime.

“There's an awful lot of people who are incarcerated and are awaiting trial, have yet to be convicted of a single thing, many of which, ultimately, their cases are vacated,” Jimenez said. “And there are no protections for these individuals who have a legal right to cast the ballot and are being temporarily incarcerated.”

Advocates still pushing for voting rights expansion against GOP resistance

During the 2022 Legislative session, New Mexico lawmakers attempted to pass voting rights legislation that would have created legal protections for election workers who face threats and intimidation, created a voluntary permanent absentee voter list, and automatically restored voting rights to people who have completed felony sentences and gave 17-year-olds voting rights in local elections if they would turn 18 by the next general election. At one point, the proposal was for children as young as 16.

Those measures were stalled by Republican lawmakers and failed to pass. But Alex Curtas, a spokesperson for the New Mexico Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver, said the secretary still supports those measures and would push for them should she be reelected.

The secretary supports eliminating “any kind of additional burdens upon people who have done all the things that the state has required them to do in order to serve the consequences of whatever crime they committed,” Curtas said. “We want people to be participants in our democracy, and the further you isolate people from civic life, i.e. taking away their voting rights, the more likely they're going to feel disconnected from society.”

The secretary also supports allowing some minors to vote in local elections.

“The younger you get people to participate in democracy, the more likely they are to do it their entire life,” Curtas said.

Jimenez said a major issue for his organization is ensuring the state's Native American communities have adequate access to the ballot.

“We'd like to see more protections for Native American communities,” Jimenez said, “as many of them have to drive well over an hour to a polling location.”

Even with those fights, access in New Mexico has still continued to expand. New Mexico first deployed same-day voter registration on Election Day during a special congressional election in 2021.

In 2022 same-day registration rolled out fully, a move which Curtas said his office has been proud of. Minor party and unaffiliated voters were able to register with a major party for the June primary during early voting and on Election Day for the first time. Existing Democrats, Republicans and Libertarians were barred from doing so, but the move expanded the eligible pool of primary voters.

This article originally appeared on Las Cruces Sun-News: Will election worker protections, more voting rights pass in New Mexico?