NM voter rolls drop by 85,000 after ‘purge’

Decline probably not tied to Trump panel

SANTA FE — New Mexico’s voter rolls have decreased by more than 85,000 people since last year’s general election — but that’s likely not due to voter apathy or concern over a federal voter commission created by President Donald Trump.

County clerks in all 33 counties conducted a “purge” of the state’s voter rolls this year that led to the removal of 98,442 registered voters, according to the Secretary of State’s Office. But some newly eligible voters have also registered since November, which could explain the difference between the two figures.

Per state and federal law, New Mexico conducts purges in oddnumbered years to remove voters no longer eligible to cast ballots — such as voters who have died and those who have moved — from the state’s rolls.

After the latest purge, New Mexico has slightly more than 1.2 million registered voters. Of that amount, roughly 46 percent are registered Democrats, and 31 percent are registered Republicans, with the rest either identifying as independent or affiliating with other political parties.

Those voter affiliation percentages were largely unchanged from the 2016 general election.

Meanwhile, voter rolls have dropped in other states in recent months.

In Colorado, more than 5,300 voters withdrew their registrations in a recent monthlong period, after Colorado’s secretary of state prepared to send certain voter information to the federal election panel set up by Trump.

New Mexico Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver has twice rejected requests to share state voter information — including birth dates and partial Social Security numbers — with the panel, officially called the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity.

At least two dozen other secretaries of state around the nation have also reportedly refused to provide at least some types of voter data to the federal commission.

“We certainly haven’t seen an influx of voters requesting that their registrations get canceled like they did in Colorado,” New Mexico Secretary of State’s Office spokesman Joey Keefe told the Journal.

The federal commission’s vice chairman has said the information being sought would be used to cross-check state voter data with information in a federal database to determine how many ineligible voters might be registered in each state, including noncitizens and dead individuals still on voter rolls.