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News
UN Sec. Gen. Ban Ki Moon
Should Go to Sudan with Gov. Richardson to Bring Peace
by Stephen Fox
Voting Matters
by Rick Lass
An Alternative State
of the Union
by David Luckey
Legislative Priorities
by State Rep. Peter Wirth
Escalation is Hardly
the Answer
by US Rep. Ron Paul
Certified Organic Candidates
Win Elections
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for Souper Bowl XIII
by The Food Depot
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Voting Matters
by Rick Lass - ricklass@newmexico.com
A new organization has sprung up in Santa Fe called Voting Matters.
Voting Matters arose as a response to increasingly low voter turnout
and participation, and the decreasing level of citizen trust in our
government. We will be very active lobbying this session for measures
that will increase voter confidence and election transparency.
We believe people are more motivated by candidates to support than to
oppose. Even though NM’s CD1 was a potential swing seat and was
highly publicized and advertised, voter turnout was actually lower than
the last midterm election. This is because so much of the message of
both campaigns was “Don’t Vote for my opponent”. When
citizens hear over and over “Don’t vote for Wilson”,
“Don’t vote for Madrid”, “Don’t vote for Bush”,
after a while the names get lost and the message they remember is simply
“Don’t vote”. And so they don’t.
We want to increase voter participation, and to do that we need to increase
the number of candidates to vote for. Unfortunately, the trend is going
the other way: there are fewer and fewer candidates every election cycle.
Of the 70 seats in the NM House, only 28 were contested in 2006. One
of the major reasons for this is the effect of gerry mandered single
seat districts- their very nature eliminates competition. We need to
undo that trend by establishing an independent redistricting commission
with competitive districts created by mathematicians and statisticians,
not politicians.
We support many of the recommendations of the Governor’s
Task Force on Ethics and Campaign Reform, including limiting campaign
contributions and gifts to elected and appointed officials, expanding
Clean Elections for more offices, and establishing an independent Ethics
Commission to establish behavioral guidelines and address complaints
against candidates and officials.
The need to limit donations to political candidates should be clear
to everyone. The system of rewarding donors and the revolving door between
government and corporations do not serve the people of this state. For
example, there is a member of the state board of finance who was appointed
by the governor and who donated $90,000 to the governor’s recent
reelection campaign. Can anyone reasonably argue there is not a connection
between those two actions?
Public Funding of Elections is a proven way of reducing corporate influence
in elections. It has been used in Maine and Arizona for a few years,
and New Mexico implemented a trial run in this year’s PRC election
(raise your hand if you’ve heard of the Public Regulation Commission).
If there is a reason to limit corporate and personal donations in PRC
elections, that same reason certainly applies to our other executive,
legislative and judicial offices.
The legislature will also be considering implementing Election Day Registration.
Currently, citizens who are not registered 28 days before election are
forbidden from voting. Election Day Registration would allow people
who have relocated or who were not aware of this requirement to participate
in elections. Seven states currently allow Election Day Registration,
and most have higher voter participation rates than states that don’t
allow voters to register on election day.
New Mexicans should be proud that our state has been leading the way
on voting machine reform. As a result of the 2004 Presidential Recount
Effort and thanks to activists associated with Verified Voting New Mexico
and United Voters of New Mexico, the state switched to an all paper
ballot system in time for the 2006 election. But much work needs to
be done still. A bill will be introduced this session clarifying the
audit procedure for our new machines. Unfortunately, the audit law did
not take effect for the 2006 election, so we don’t in fact know
that the new optical scan machines are any better than the faulty touch
screen machines they replaced.
It is clear that the role of government is to protect the health, safety,
and welfare of everyday citizens from the abuses caused by unbridled
corporate power. The first proof of this is that citizens must be able
to elect their representatives and must trust that their votes are being
counted accurately. With privately owned corporations controlling everything
from our voting machines to our air waves, it is no wonder many people
feel their votes don’t count. There is no more urgent task than
to convince them otherwise.
I strongly urge the reader to get to know his or her senator and house
representative, and be in contact with them to express your support
for clean and transparent elections that put voters first. And then
get your neighbors to do the same.
Rick Lass is a founder and director of Voting Matters, a non profit
corporation dedicated to increasing voter participation and implementing
voting systems improvements like Proportional Representation and Ranked
Choice Voting. He can be reached at ricklass@newmexico.com
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