Court order allows judge to run as Democrat

It took a court order, but a magistrate judge from Las Cruces will be a Democrat after all following a mix-up over her voter registration that threatened to keep her off the primary election ballot in June.

The Doña Ana County clerk had disqualified Samantha Madrid from running for re-election in the Democratic Party primary because her voter registration showed she is registered as an independent, not a Democrat.

The lifelong Democrat’s voter registration apparently changed after she got a duplicate copy of her driver’s license from an MVD Express in October.

But Madrid maintained she never agreed or intended to change her registration at the driver’s license office, arguing it was all an error.

State District Judge David K. Thomson ruled in Madrid’s favor Friday.

Thomson wrote that the change was due to either a clerical error in transmitting information from the Motor Vehicle Division to the Secretary of State’s Office or a misunderstanding.

Thomson declared null and void the voter registration form that identified Madrid as an independent and declared her a Democrat once again. The judge also told the Secretary of State’s Office to hold off on approving ballots until Madrid is listed as a candidate.

No one involved in the case could remember anything like it during a daylong hearing in Santa Fe on Thursday.

But the Doña Ana County Clerk’s Office argued Madrid could still have run for re-election as an independent.

A graduate of The University of New Mexico School of Law, Madrid first won a spot on the bench in 2014. No one else is running for her seat this year.