Our correspondent in New Mexico updated us on the battle over whether first-time voters who did not register in person will have to show identification before voting. (See this post for some background.) A New Mexico statute requires first-time voters who did not register in person to show some identification when voting. The secretary of state has directed county clerks to apply the law only to people who register by mail directly, but not to people who submit forms to get-out-the-vote organizations that then bring the bags of forms to the clerk’s office in person.
As reported by the Alamogordo Daily on September 18:
District Judge Jerry Ritter has ordered Otero County Clerk Mary Quintana to follow a 2003 law requiring first time voters to show ID at the polls.
Ritter signed the order Friday after state representatives Terry Marquardt and Gloria Vaughn, both Republicans, and Green Party candidate William C. Wolfgram (all of Otero County), sued three days earlier to enforce the law. While Marquardt said Quintana “has been an exemplary clerk and elected official,” the suit was the only way to ensure local compliance.
The law stipulates first-time voters must be so noted at registration and that when they vote to show identification. But when the law went into effect on July 1, 2003, Secretary of State Rebecca Vigil-Geron instructed clerks statewide to ignore it.
“We have an obligation to thoughtfully consider and follow the advice that is given to us by the secretary of state,” Quintana said.
The secretary of state gave her advice as a letter of instruction and not through a formal rulemaking process. The county clerks want the New Mexico Supreme Court to tell them one way or the other what they must do. And underlying this is the struggle to keep Ralph Nader off the New Mexico ballot (at last report, he was off the ballot), part of what Republicans there see as a 22-state effort by the Democratic National Committee to keep Mr. Nader off state ballots.