New Mexico independent voters blocked from primaries

New Mexico independent voters blocked from primaries

Posted at: 04/09/2012 5:35 PM
By: Stuart Dyson, KOB Eyewitness News 4

Early voting starts in a month for New Mexico's primary election - an election thousands of registered voters will not be allowed to vote in, even though their tax dollars are helping to pay for it.

They are independent voters, those who "decline to state" a party preference in the lingo of the state election code. They are about 190,000 strong in New Mexico right now, but they cannot cast ballots in the Democratic and Republican primaries that they help pay for.

Independents make up about 17 percent of the state's registered voters, and that's quite a chunk when you add the three percent or so who register in so-called "third parties".

But the law says only Democrats get to vote in the Democratic primary and only Republicans get to vote in the Republican primary, and longtime election watchers don't expect that to change anytime soon.

"Candidates are afraid that in the primary context, you have a small group of voters and if you let anybody else in they might lose control," said University of New Mexico Political Science professor, Lonna Atkeson. "That's something incumbents worry about, so they're probably pretty unlikely to want to change the rules. But inclusion is actually better for the political parties because they can bring people into their primary system and grow their voter bases."

Primary election day is Tuesday, June 5, but Election Day really starts on May 8, with early voting.

New Mexico independent voters blocked from primaries | KOB.com