New Mexico continued its move toward fully open primaries with a bill that Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed into law on Monday.
SB 16 will allow those who are not part of a major political party to participate in their choice of primary elections. The voters would not need to change their party to a major party to participate.
New Mexico currently has three major political parties: the Democratic Party, the Republican Party and the Libertarian Party. These are the only parties that hold primary elections to determine which candidate makes the general election ballot. Independents, known as decline-to-state in New Mexico, and minor party candidates have a different process to make the ballot, which rarely happens in recent elections.
Those who choose to not align with any major political party have become an increasingly large percentage of New Mexico’s registered voters. As of March 31, 42.6% of registered voters are Democrats, 32.4% are Republicans and 23.1% are decline-to-state.
In 2019, the Legislature passed a law that allowed people to change their party affiliation on election day in primaries to participate.
As of March 31 of 2015, a decade ago, 47% of registered voters were Democrats, 31% were Republicans and 18% were decline-to-state.
The National Conference of State Legislatures says 15 states have completely open primaries, while 7 states have laws similar to New Mexico’s new law, which allows unaffiliated voters to participate in their choice or primary but does not allow major party voters to vote in another major party’s primary.
The bill narrowly passed the House (36-33) after it passed by a wider margin in the Senate (27-11), with some Democrats voting along with most Republicans against the bill in each chamber.
Rather than using the term “Declined-to-State” (a bit presumptuous) or even “Independent” (used by some other political parties), I think the most accurate term to use legally is Unaffiliated, which your reporter used in the penultimate paragraph. Thank you.