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Following 2022 midterm victories, New Mexico Democrats pass state Voting Rights Act into law [1]

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Date: 2023-03-30  

New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D)

On Thursday, Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed a bill into law that adopts several voting reforms meant to expand the electorate and protect Native American voting rights. Known as the New Mexico Voting Rights Act, the new law includes:

Automatic voter registration at the state’s driver’s licensing agency begins in 2025, along with expanding voter registration opportunities at other state agencies.

A Native American Voting Rights Act that guarantees access to polling places on tribal land, requires language translation at polling places, authorizes tribes to conduct community collection of mail ballots, and allows the use of official tribal buildings for voter registration addresses, since many residents living on remote reservations in the western U.S. lack traditional postal service and driver's licenses.

Abolishing felony voter disenfranchisement for the roughly 11,000 people who are on parole or probation and providing voter registration opportunities when people are released from incarceration.

Making Election Day a state holiday.

An opt-in list for voters to permanently receive absentee ballots in all future elections, which remains in effect so long as they don't skip two consecutive general elections.

Requiring a minimum of two absentee ballot drop boxes in each county and allowing the secretary of state to authorize additional drop boxes.

The new law shares much in common with similar proposals that Democrats have introduced in Minnesota, some of which they have already passed, after Democrats there retook control of state government for the first time in nearly a decade. The New Mexico legislation continues a pattern of Democrats seeking to expand voting rights in blue states as Republicans curtail them in red states.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/3/30/2159985/-Following-2022-midterm-victories-New-Mexico-Democrats-pass-state-Voting-Rights-Act-into-law

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