By Nicole Maxwell
The 2025 New Mexico Legislative Session began Tuesday with the usual pomp and circumstance, followed by legislation being filed and printed.
One of those pieces of legislation was Senate Bill 16 which seeks to create open primaries.
The bill is sponsored by Sen. Natalie Figueroa, D-Albuquerque, and Senate Majority Floor Leader Peter Wirth, D-Santa Fe.
The same-day voter registration initiative can be seen as a workaround for those who would like to vote in a primary but are not listed as being part of a major political party.
The voter can change their political party registration at the polling place and change it back afterwards if they so choose.
“Currently, 25% of New Mexicans registered as independents or minor party voters are not able to vote in our publicly-funded primary elections. Semi-open primaries would remove the inequitable burden of having to change voter registration in order to be able to vote in a primary. Instead, these voters could select a party’s ballot at the primary,” according to New Mexico Open Elections.
If SB 16 is approved, New Mexico would join 38 other states that have some kind of open primary elections.
Lawmakers are also taking another crack at establishing a Legislative Salaries Commission to determine what, if anything, legislators should be paid.
The last time the Legislature saw an attempt to set up a salary commission was in 2023. That attempt passed the House but died in the Senate.
This year’s attempt is Senate Joint Resolution 1 which, if passed, would put the issue on a ballot, asking voters to decide whether a legislative salary committee should be established in the New Mexico Constitution.
The legislation was filed by Rep. Joy Garratt, D-Albuquerque, Sen. Katy Duhigg, D-Albuquerque, Figueroa and Wirth.
This is easy. Pay them. We need full time, dedicated, serious legislators.
Anything short of that is insanity.
I don’t understand how open primary voting would improve the voting process. I my mind, parties represent groups of people who have collectively decided to work together on a shared goals and values. Primaries are opportunities for those people to choose leaders who specifically represent those goals and, so they hope, are electable in the general election. Elected representatives of the various parties then work together in government to move the body politic in that party’s desired direction.
Opening primaries transforms the process into a two-step election. The first step winnows the candidates into a smaller slate of candidate and the second into a final race. It essentially becomes a two step voting where all candidates can be voted on equally and the top candidates with each brand name are voted on in a runoff.
What could possibly go right with that? The candidates representing each party don’t necessarily share the values of the party because no values are expressed. We don’t even know if they will work together once elected as agreed upon goals or values have been expressed.