GOP wants mail-in ballots by request only in New Mexico
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — Legal battle lines were drawn Wednesday in a standoff over alternatives to in-person voting amid a coronavirus stay-at-home order and targeted curfew in New Mexico, where Democrats dominate all three branches of government and the Republican Party says mail-in ballots should be distributed by request only.
The increasingly blue state provides a counterpoint to a decision in Wisconsin to forge ahead with in-person voting Tuesday at the insistence of its conservative-majority state Supreme Court and Republicans. Across the country, major parties are preparing for a monthslong, state-by-state legal fight over how citizens can safely cast their ballots should the coronavirus outbreak persist through November’s election.
New Mexico’s Democrat-dominated state Supreme Court was collecting written briefings Wednesday as it weighed a request from a majority of local election regulators to suspend standard in-person voting at local precincts in the June 2 primary and instead distribute mail-in ballots broadly to active-voter addresses where election-related mail has not bounced back.
The proposal from about two dozen county clerks also would provide “service centers” for people who still want to fill out a provisional ballot on election day or deliver an absentee ballot by hand. The idea is to safeguard voters and elderly poll workers from the risk of infection at polling and early voting sites. But advocates for voting access said in court filings that any election limited to mail-in ballots alone runs the risk of disenfranchising residents of extremely remote rural areas without internet access or traditional street addresses.
The Legislature appeared unlikely to take up the matter on its own because of potential health risks of meeting in person and legal obstacles associated with remote conferencing technologies. New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham has closed schools, nonessential business and issued a stay-at-home order, as the Navajo Nation enforces an evening and weekend curfew across the northwest portion of the state in response to a major coronavirus outbreak there.
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — Legal battle lines were drawn Wednesday in a standoff over alternatives to in-person voting amid a coronavirus stay-at-home order and targeted curfew in New Mexico, where Democrats dominate all three branches of government and the Republican Party says mail-in ballots should be distributed by request only.
The increasingly blue state provides a counterpoint to a decision in Wisconsin to forge ahead with in-person voting Tuesday at the insistence of its conservative-majority state Supreme Court and Republicans. Across the country, major parties are preparing for a monthslong, state-by-state legal fight over how citizens can safely cast their ballots should the coronavirus outbreak persist through November’s election.
New Mexico’s Democrat-dominated state Supreme Court was collecting written briefings Wednesday as it weighed a request from a majority of local election regulators to suspend standard in-person voting at local precincts in the June 2 primary and instead distribute mail-in ballots broadly to active-voter addresses where election-related mail has not bounced back.
The proposal from about two dozen county clerks also would provide “service centers” for people who still want to fill out a provisional ballot on election day or deliver an absentee ballot by hand.
The idea is to safeguard voters and elderly poll workers from the risk of infection at polling and early voting sites. But advocates for voting access said in court filings that any election limited to mail-in ballots alone runs the risk of disenfranchising residents of extremely remote rural areas without internet access or traditional street addresses.
The Legislature appeared unlikely to take up the matter on its own because of potential health risks of meeting in person and legal obstacles associated with remote conferencing technologies.
New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham has closed schools, nonessential business and issued a stay-at-home order, as the Navajo Nation enforces an evening and weekend curfew across the northwest portion of the state in response to a major coronavirus outbreak there.
