New Mexico:
Want to get more people to the polls?.....This Democrat's solution is to send everyone an absentee ballot!
Democrat Looks At Ways To Up Voter Turnout
By BARRY MASSEY | Associated Press 12/03/2002
Jamie Koch
tate Democratic chairman Jamie Koch wants the Legislature to consider ways to reverse the slide in voter turnout in New Mexico elections.
Koch said Monday that he plans to ask lawmakers next year to rewrite election laws to make it easier to get an absentee ballot. He also wants to shorten the ballot in general elections by having constitutional amendments and bond issues decided separately through mail-only voting.
New Mexico reached a new low in voter participation in this year's general election.
About 38 percent of the state's voting-age population cast ballots, down from about 41 percent in the previous midterm election in 1998.
Nationally, turnout was estimated at about 39 percent, up slightly from four years ago, according to unofficial figures from the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate, an independent research group based in Washington, D.C.
Voter turnout typically is higher in presidential-election years.
For New Mexico, voter turnout was the lowest in a gubernatorial election year since 1990 and 1986, when 39 percent of the voting-age population cast ballots, according to records kept by the Federal Election Commission. Turnout reached 51 percent in 1966.
Fewer New Mexicans voted this year than four years ago - the first decline in total votes cast in a midterm election in almost two decades.
"We have to do something about turnout," said Koch.
He wants the Legislature to streamline the procedure for obtaining an absentee ballot and hopes that will encourage more people to vote. Koch proposes to require county clerks to automatically send an application for an absentee ballot to all registered voters in a general election.
Currently, voters must request an application, fill it out and return it to the clerk to obtain an absentee ballot. Koch said that system is too confusing and discourages some people from voting.
State Republican Party Chairman John Dendahl said Koch's proposal is a step toward an election by mail, which is done in Oregon, and could increase the potential for voter fraud.
"He's talking about a huge amount of additional mail expense," Dendahl said of the Democratic chairman's proposal.
The state GOP and Democratic Party used to mass mail ballot applications to targeted registered voters, but that practice was banned by a rule in 2000 by Secretary of State Rebecca Vigil-Giron.
This year, for instance, the GOP sent postcards that voters could mail to their county clerks to request an absentee-ballot application.
Koch attributes the decline in voter turnout to several factors, including negative campaign advertising and mailings. He speculates this year's long ballot, which included nine constitutional amendments and five general-obligation bond questions, caused some people to skip the election because they feared long waits at voting locations.
Dendahl said he is not overly concerned about the decline in voter turnout in New Mexico. "I don't wring my hands in agony over the fact that turnout is low. I don't want uninterested people coming to the polls and pushing a bunch of buttons," said Dendahl.
He also doubts that changing election laws will do much to improve voter participation.
"I think there is a declining civic spirit among the population of the U.S., and an awful lot of people are sitting on their hands and just delegating responsibilities of making government leadership decisions to other people," said Dendahl.
Curtis Gans, director of the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate, said his research has found that early voting and relaxed absentee voting have hurt turnout.
He contends those election-law changes have merely shifted voting patterns - away from Election Day - rather than encouraging more people to cast ballots. Early-voting systems have diffused the focus of get-out-the-vote efforts away from a single day.
©Santa Fe New Mexican 2002
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