No early voting site for APS on West Side

Resident calls polling place distribution ‘voter suppression’

West Side voters who want to cast an early ballot in upcoming bond elections for Albuquerque Public Schools and Central New Mexico Community College will have to travel a ways to do it.

While there are five early voting sites, two of them are in the Southeast Heights, with none on the northwest side of the city.

“I just feel we’re being shorted on the West Side,” said Paradise Hills resident David Duganne. “In APS District 2, there are 55,000 eligible voters, people who can cast an early vote, and they don’t have a voting site for us in our part of town.”

Duganne said he checked online county clerk sources and made inquiries with APS and was told the closest early voting sites to his home were APS headquarters in Uptown and the Robert F. Kennedy Charter School in the South Valley, both of which are about 15 miles from his home.

“A more balanced distribution of sites, such as one in each quadrant, plus a site for the East Mountain residents, would provide equal access to our voting options,” Duganne said. “The current early voting site layout can only be viewed as voter suppression.”

APS spokesman Rigo Chavez disputed the charge that the location of early voting sites was suppression. He said voters can still cast an absentee ballot, go to any of the early voting sites, or show up at any of the 30 voting sites on Election Day.

During the last APS bond election, in 2013, “there was an early voting site in the northwest, but not in the southwest, so this time they put one in the southwest but not the northwest,” Chavez said.

While site location is important, so is the economics of early voting, he said.

“We have to pay the county

Clerk’s Office to staff these early voting sites, and the county clerk has only a limited number of staff to work in these sites. We also have to pay the county Clerk’s Office for running the election.”

The early voting sites for this bond election are all at APS, charter school or CNM locations, so there are no building rental costs, Chavez said. In the 2013 election, the northwest site was located in retail space at Coors Plaza, 3200 Coors NW, and required a rental fee.

The decision on site selection, Chavez said, was made jointly by representatives from APS, CNM and the Bernalillo County Clerk’s Office.

Peggy Muller-Aragon, the APS District 2 board member, said she is concerned that constituents in her district don’t have a convenient early voting site for this bond election.

“How could I not be upset? It seems unfair,” she said Thursday. “I called the county Clerk’s Office and wanted to know who was in the room when that decision was made, and no one could tell me.”

The other early voting locations are the APS Lincoln Complex, 915 Locust SE; CNM main campus, 525 Buena Vista SE; and CNM Montoya campus, 4700 Morris NE.

Early voting began Wednesday and will continue through Jan. 30. The election is Feb. 2. Voters will be asked to approve bond and mill levy questions totaling $575 million for APS and $84 million for CNM.