Say what? "Too Many candidates a problem for Dems"

By Gideon Elliot

That was the headline of the Santa Fe New Mexican this morning in an article by Steve Terrell, citing a new law intended to streanthen  political parties' control of access to primary election ballots. With few exceptions, the legislation received little notice and Terrell reports "quietly sailed through the
Legislature unanimously and was signed into law by Gov. Richardson."

But key provisions of HB 1156, titled "various election code changes," sponsored by Rep. Edward C. Sandoval (D-17), could possibly cause the Democratic Party to be barred from the ballot in the 3rd Congressional District if none of the candidates to replace Udall receive 20 percent of the delegate vote at the pre-primary nominating convention.

Prior to the enactment of the new law, candidates who failed to receive 20% of the vote at the pre-primary nominating convention could still get on the ballot by collecting additional petition signatures to present to the Secretary of State. Under the new law, candidates no longer have the option of submitting additional signatures to get on the ballot, making the pre-primary vote the deciding factor.

But with more than 5 candidates running for the Democratic nomination to replace Tom Udall, there is every possibility that none of them could receive the necessary 20% to get on the ballot. 

At the core of this issue is the relationship between private organizations, which political parties are, and the state. Obviously, the parties want to have total control over who can (or cannot) be on their primary ballots. But for the state to assume that the party process is the only legitimate voice of party registrants and shut out those candidates who produce the signatures of rank and file Dems, seems to be a vote of confidence in the internal democratic processes of the parties and their ability to express the will of their membership. What then do we make of the fact that both the DPNM and the GOPNM replaced candidates who won their party's primary election?

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Comments

[Michelle Meaders]

You know what else was tucked away in HB 1156?
On page 3 of the final version:

"Section 4. Section 1-1-23 NMSA 1978 (being Laws 2005,Chapter 270, Section 5) is amended to read:

"1-1-23. UNIQUE IDENTIFIER.--As used in the Election Code, "unique identifier" means a randomly generated series of numbers, letters or symbols assigned to a voter, which shall not be the voter's social security number or date of birth.""

I'm told it was tacked onto the bill because some legislators -- mostly Repubs, led by Janice Arnold-Jones -- claimed that privacy was being violated by using the last four digits of the SSN as the voter ID number. They managed to convince Rep. Ed Sandoval to bury the provision in his bill."

Democracy for New Mexico and Heath Haussamen have been writing about this lately.