Secretary of State is Engaged in Campaign to Undermine Public Confidence in NM Elections

Following is a public statement by Common Cause New Mexico, scrutinizing the Secretary of States thought processes inside her most recent voter record between time report.

Normal Cause New Mexico (CCNM) cautions that Secretary of State Dianna Duran's way of directing an audit of New Mexico's voter record appears to mirror an exasperating factional inclination. The association's remarks take after Duran's open arrival of a 17-page interval report about the procedure.

While CCNM praises her endeavors to tidy up New Mexico's voter record and concurs this is an authentic capacity of the Secretary of State's office, CCNM trusts that she is intentionally undermining open trust in New Mexico races absolutely to advance strategies, for example, voter picture ID, which are intended to keep qualified New Mexicans from throwing a poll.

"The way she's approached this shrouded procedure is totally unusual," says Steven Robert Allen, official executive of CCNM. "The report is yet another case in which Secretary Duran reliably paints New Mexico races as a hotbed of issues, while declining to give documentation to move down her attestations. This doesn't bode well unless she's endeavoring to intentionally mix up fear among both leaders and the overall population to propel her own political motivation."

Allen points out that the Secretary of State first launched her media campaign in March of this year while advocating for a burdensome new voter ID law. Voting rights advocates believe that such a law would have the effect of disenfranchising thousands of legitimate New Mexico voters, in particular among senior, student, Native American, Hispanic and low-income populations. Since March, Duran has repeatedly kept the public and voters in the dark about the methodology she’s using to conduct the review.

"This is by all accounts some portion of a national push to stifle voter turnout," Allen says, "which has been flying up frequently in swing states like New Mexico. The objective is to pass laws particularly intended to disappoint qualified voters in the run-up to a noteworthy race year."

Allen notes that the Colorado Secretary of State launched a similar media campaign within days of Secretary Duran.

In the recent ‘interim’ report, Duran fills numerous pages insisting that she has been engaged in a valid, objective, non-partisan process. CCNM believes that if this were so, she would have launched her media campaign after her office attempted to resolve discrepancies in the voter file by working directly with county election officials. The fact that she has to this date failed to take this obvious step – instead choosing to actually attack the integrity of some of these same county election officials – makes her actions and motivations highly suspect, at best.

New Mexico has had numerous problems with its Secretaries of State in recent years. CCNM believes New Mexico desperately deserves a chief election official who is willing and able to conduct herself in a manner that protects the rights of all qualified New Mexicans to cast a ballot.

CCNM urges Secretary Duran to abandon her partisan media campaign and get down to the serious business of preparing the state for the important election year ahead.