Ballot access barrier remains for independents

The New Mexico secretary of state has finally published the number of petition signatures required by independent candidates for office to appear on the ballot for the general election next November. The difference between the petition requirements for independent candidates compared to candidates affiliated with political parties is striking.

For example, for the office of United States representative for District 3, an independent candidate needs 4,565 petition signatures, whereas a candidate affiliated with a minor party, such as the Green Party, needs only 2,282. Major party candidates have even lower requirements for getting on the ballot for the primary election. Democrats required only 974 petition signatures for this office, Republicans 755, and Libertarians a mere 78.

It is not clear what the rationale may be for this difference in petition requirements, except to discourage independent candidates from running for office at all, and to keep political parties in power.

One might argue that the low number of petition signatures required by major party candidates to appear on the primary ballot is a reflection of the competitive nature of the primaries themselves, that the ultimate candidate for a party in the general election will be one of many candidates in the primary election, and therefore that the requirements for primary candidates must be lower to permit competitiveness within the party primary.

However, this argument is undermined by the observation that only about 27% of all nominations for offices within a party in the upcoming New Mexico primary in June are contested at all.

One encouraging development is the New Mexico Secretary of State’s new electronic petition portal (electronicpetitions.elections.sos.nm.gov), which allows candidates to solicit petition signatures without having to go door to door to collect physical signatures. I hope more independent candidates take advantage of this portal to get on the ballot for the general election. Unfortunately, though, the Secretary of State’s Office is not particularly expeditious in approving candidate applications to use this portal.

Independent voters account for 23.5% of all registered voters in New Mexico, as of March 29, and in 10 counties registered independent voters outnumber either registered Democrats or Republicans. However, a recent Gallup poll indicates 43% of those polled nationwide consider themselves independent voters.

If this poll result reflects the actual number of independents in New Mexico as well, it suggests that many potential independent voters are simply not registering to vote, possibly because there are no genuinely independent candidates to support, just the usual suspects from political parties.