Check Out NM Election Reform Coalition

Introduction
United Voters of New Mexico is a new coalition of groups working on election reform in New Mexico. We are bringing together all of the organizations that are working for fair, accurate, and transparent elections in New Mexico and giving them a means by which to share information and data.

New Website
You can always get the latest information about what's going on in New Mexico at our website: https://UVoteNM.org. The website is one of the main ways that we are enabling these groups to work together.

Volunteers Needed
We are looking for people to help in a few specific ways:
*Action Updates -- We need someone to collect, collate, and write the Action updates section below. This is not a lot of work, but would make my life MUCH easier.
*We need people who are willing to write press releases and help with press relations. Exactly what this means will depend on your abilities and schedule.

Please email info@UVoteNM.org if your interested in helping.

Updates
There are four main areas that we will keep you up to date on: Action -- how you can get involved, Legislation -- what's going on in the legislature, Voter's Lawsuit -- follow this important legal action, and the Recount -- what's the current situation?

Action
There are many different ways that you can help with this effort from the comfort of your own home.

Right now, consider calling House Speaker Ben Lujan at 986-4782 in Santa Fe during business hours. Ask him to support legislation this session on two topics; (1) require voter-verifiable paper ballots (VVPB) from all voting machines, and (2) stop the Secretary of State from purchasing any new non-VVPB machines. For more details, click here. Check out the Action page on the website for more ways to help.

Legislation
There is so much going on in with election reform in this 60 day session of the New Mexico legislature. The Governor along with several Representatives and Senators are introducing election reform bills.

More than 30 bills have been introduced into the NM House and Senate so far. Those assigned to the House Voting and Elections Committee (HVEC) are being temporarily tabled after an initial hearing so that the committee can review them all at once. The bills are summarized here by topic.  Many have yet to receive an initial hearing.

Voter's Lawsuit
A lawsuit was filed on behalf of 8 New Mexico voters on January 14, 2005. The focus and primary purpose of this action is to put in place a permanent injunction against use of the voting machines that have been linked to the most alarming problems in the 2004 general election. For specific examples of some of these problems, click here.Named in the case as defendants are the Secretary of State Rebecca Vigil-Giron and a handful of county clerks. The plaintiffs are eight voters representing three political parties – 6 democrats, 1 green, and 1 libertarian - across multiple counties throughout the state. Since the filing many of these counties have cleared their machines while others have come up with alternatives for dealing with the upcoming school board elections such as utilizing paper ballots or reserving the machines from the most problematic precincts. Whether the machines have been cleared or not, the lawsuit has enough evidence to prove that there are major problems tied to machine type vs. voter type as well as other problems with the  vote count and procedures that are detrimental to fair and accurate elections in New Mexico.

The Recount
Despite rumors to the contrary, the recount effort remains alive in the New Mexico Court of Appeals. The fact that the recount remains active continues to shed light on the problems surrounding the control of the voting process as well as the vote count itself. It is important to remember, that the value of the recount has always been about affecting change for future elections, not just finding out what happened to the last one. As there are a variety of vote count problems that include paper ballot issues, even if many of the counties do clear their paperless voting machines there is still much to discover. Again, for more information on what went wrong with the vote count, taken from public data available from the Secretary of State, click here.

To subscribe to our email updates, send an email from the address that you wish to subscribe to, to update-subscribe@UVoteNM.org.