New Mexico Settles Suit Alleging Failure To Implement Expanded Voting For Felons
by Anthony W. Accurso
On September 26, 2024, voting rights group Millions for Prisoners (M4P) sued New Mexico Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver (D), alleging that state policies, practices, and procedures substantially denied access to thousands of released state prisoners eligible to vote.
They were re-enfranchised by the New Mexico Voting Rights Act (NMVRA), which went into effect on July 1, 2023, and changed state laws to increase ballot access for convicted felons. Specifically, the new law granted the right to vote the moment that a prisoner is released from incarceration, whether or not he or she remains on probation or post-release supervision.
The law, which was expected to re-enfranchise around 11,000 former state prisoners, required the state Corrections Department (NMCD) to provide accurate data about incarcerated individuals to county clerks, as well as to provide voter registration opportunities for those leaving prison. However, as late as September 2024—14 months after NMVRA became law—Oliver’s office had not updated its website and forms to reflect these changes, nor had it notified the United States Election Assistance Commission about the modified eligibility.
M4P’s lawsuit alleged that the unmodified voter registration forms contained “erroneous instructions and attestation” which were likely to “confuse would-be registrants and effectively render the form unusable for people on probation or parole.” In particular, the form required applicants “to affirm or swear under penalty of perjury that ‘if [they] have been convicted of a felony, [they] have completed all conditions of parole and supervised probation, served the entirety of a sentence or have been granted a pardon by the governor.’”
The suit also accused NMCD of failing to update the State Elections Registration and Voting Integrity System (SERVIS) database, which county clerks use to verify incarceration status when registering voters. “As a result,” read the complaint, “[Defendants] appear to be using felony conviction as a proxy for current incarceration when determining individuals’ eligibility to register to vote, in contravention of the NMVRA.”
Afterward the parties reached a settlement agreement fairly quickly. But given its impact on then-upcoming November 2024 elections, the Santa Fe County District Court provided added legal weight by putting its terms into a stipulated order on October 8, 2024. Among them, Judge Kathleen McGarry Ellenwood directed Oliver’s office to update its website with corrected forms and to send each county clerk a list of people who had been denied and are now eligible. In addition, Oliver was told to coordinate with NMCD to create “a mechanism for seamless exchange of data” by July 1, 2025, so that the problem doesn’t recur.
Selinda Guerrero, who worked with M4P, called the ruling “an important reminder to political leaders that nobody is above the law.” The group was represented by Santa Fe attorney Daniel Yohalem, along with attorneys Blair Bowie and Melissa Neal of Campaign Legal Center in Washington, D.C. Additional representation was provided by attorneys Faith E. Gay, Elizabeth Snow and Jeffrey Zalesin of Selendy Gay PLLC in New York City. See: Millions for Prisoners N.M. v. Oliver, N.M. 1st Jud. Dist. (Cty. of Santa Fe), Case No. 101-CV-2024-02341.
Additional sources: Bolts Magazine, KOAT
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