New Mexico Voting Rights Act

Until now, New Mexico voters who wanted to cast an absentee ballot had to request one for each election. That has now changed with the creation of a permanent absentee voter list.

Bills aiming to create broader and safer participation in New Mexico elections continued to move swiftly in both chambers of the Legislature Monday.

Democratic sponsors of the New Mexico Voting Rights Act say more people would be registered to vote and have access to the ballot were it to become law. Many Republicans argued on the House floor late into the night Tuesday that certain provisions could compromise election security. The House backed the bill after three hours of debate.

With hours left in the 30-day legislative session, a bill to expand voting rights in New Mexico made it to the Senate floor, but stalled as Republican Sen. William Sharer ran down the clock. Sharer’s filibuster was not the first procedural maneuver Senate Republicans employed to stop voting rights legislation from passing.

After a bill expanding voting rights in New Mexico got hung up on the Senate floor, a version of it remains alive as the 30-day legislative session nears its end.

A bill that would expand voting rights in New Mexico has lost more key provisions as it moves forward in the state Senate.

The New Mexico Voting Rights Act passed out of committee on a party-line vote Monday, Feb. 7, with Republicans in opposition. With the session ending next week, the bill backed by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham may also have a new stop to make before reaching her desk.

Amid a national conversation about voting rights, we’ve seen efforts to restrict access to the ballot in other states and two federal voting rights bills stalled in the United States Congress. On this episode of #YNMG we'll cover New Mexico's Senate Bill 8, the New Mexico Voting Rights Act, which has the backing of Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver and Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham. It's aimed at expanding voting access by making it easier to vote and even allowing new classes of people a chance to cast ballots.