Walt Rubel Commentary: NM elections don’t need help from the feds

​I don’t think our elections were crooked when I moved here in 2002, but they were conducted incompetently.

Then-County Clerk Ruben Ceballos and his chief deputy Aurelio Enriquez were both charged with 14 offenses related to their handling of the primary election that year, including improper shredding of absentee ballots, demanding illegal fees and conspiracy.

New Mexico elections overall were a mess. There was no consistency from one county to another, and far too many were still relying on out-dated voting machines.

All of that changed in 2010 when the New Mexico Legislature passed comprehensive voter reform that requires paper ballots to be used in all elections; sets uniform standards for voter ID and for counting absentee ballots and provisional ballots. All ballots are secured and available if a recount is needed.

Of all the big, splashy bills passed under Bill Richardson - the Spaceport, the Rail Runner train, an end to the food tax - none has had a more positive, long-term impact than election reform.

Now, our elections are ranked as the best in the nation, according to the Elections Performance Index done by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It judged states based on 20 different metrics including voter turnout, voter registration rates, voting times, data completeness, online registration availability and post-election audits.

New Mexico has a voter registration rate of more than 80 percent, a rejection rate of less than 1 percent on new voter registrations and an average voting time of less than four minutes.

I wish all states would make the same changes we did. And, most have now switched to paper ballots. But, the Constitution makes it clear that is their choice. States have control over their own elections.

Congress can establish guardrails, such as with the Help America Vote Act, passed under George W. Bush in 2002. It set minimum standards and provided funding to help states replace old voting machines and meet the new requirements.

Now, Republicans are proposing the SAVE Act, which would require a Real ID-compliant card or passport to vote. I don’t object to voter ID, as long as the government pays all the expenses needed to ensure that every eligible voter is provided with a card. There is nothing in this bill to accommodate that. 

And, if the theory is that tougher ID is needed to prevent undocumented immigrants from voting, our last Republican Secretary of State, Diana Duran, invested a great deal of time and money attempting to find those illegal voters, and came up empty.

Other, much larger probes to root out illegal voting in other states have yielded paltry numbers. A review of Utah’s 2,1 million registered voters uncovered one noncitizen. Georgia, which has become the center of the debate ever since the 2020 election, found 20 registered noncitizens in a 2024 audit of its 8.2 million registered voters.

The election process must balance security concerns against voter suppression. For every one illegal vote prevented by the SAVE Act, there will be thousands of eligible voters who wrongfully get shut out.

We’ve done a good job in New Mexico of professionalising our elections. Now, the federal government wants to get involved. It wasn’t so long ago that political conservatives used to stand up for states rights and oppose that kind of meddling from D.C.


Walter Rubel can be reached at [email protected]

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