New Mexico

New Mexico same-day voter registrations surged in this election

Published

1 year ago

November 12, 2024

New Mexico same-day voter registrations surged in this election

New Mexico saw a record number of people in this election using same day registration. That made for some logistical challenges. Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver told New Mexico in Focus. Producer Jeff Proctor why she supports offering this option and why it’s increasingly popular.

MAGGIE TOULOUSE OLIVER: Actually, we’re still trying to process those numbers. We know that towards the end of the day on election day, over 8,000 on election day alone. It was so many that it literally crashed our system. We were able to get the system back up, but by that point, county clerks and their teams were already so overwhelmed that they were unable to keep up, which is totally understandable. So we started registering folks on paper, which is definitely part of the process. It’s provided for in law and rule. But our county clerks are still going through those and processing them and adding them. So if I had to guess, I think we’re going to have over 10,000 election same-day registrations alone.

NMPBS: Do we have a sense of affiliation split on the same day registrations?

TOULOSE OLIVER: Well, during early voting, Republicans were definitely taking advantage more than Democrats, and we saw that actually the first time we ever implemented same-day registration the first election in 2022 and a lot of that came from, you know, the Southeastern part of the state, where we have folks that are coming and living here. They’re working in the oil fields, right? And they’re working in potash and all these areas. And so we do have people who, you know, they’re not home in Texas or Oklahoma or Kansas, they’re here. They’re working, so this is where they’re voting. And, you know, I’ll be interested to see the geographics once we have a chance to analyze of where everybody came from this time.

NMPBS: Me too, just as a concept, Maggie, why do you think same-day registration is important for the larger mosaic of our elections?

TOULOUSE OLIVER: Well, you know, I’m just am, and always have been, a huge believer in having the biggest participation possible. Because when people of all backgrounds, you know, ages, colors, economic backgrounds, come together and have their voice made registered at the polls, we elect leaders that look and feel more like us as a people, right? It’s more representative, you know, 28 days before an election, which is the “registration deadline,” is really arbitrary, and people, especially younger people, are people who haven’t participated before. They don’t necessarily know that, right? And so we just really need to provide that opportunity for folks to make sure they can still participate, even if their daily lives and what they know about the voting process didn’t align with meeting a particular arbitrary deadline.

NMPBS: What is your motivation to continue doing this work, particularly in this political climate.

TOULOUSE OLIVER: Yeah, thank you, Jeff. It’s really hard. It has been hard always. I mean, this is incredibly stressful, incredibly time-consuming work. I found my calling when I became county clerk of Bernalillo County. I can’t think of anything more meaningful that I could be doing than making sure that the wheels of democracy continue to turn. I’m a huge believer. Yes, I’m a member of the Democratic Party, but I always like to say I’m a small d democrat too, because I’m just a big believer in our democracy. I will tell you when I had to make a decision about whether or not to run again for reelection in 2022 after everything that happened in 2020 and particularly, you know, threats to my life, my family, you know, having to relocate for weeks on end, uou know, working with the FBI, things like that, I really did have to dig deep to decide if that is what I wanted to continue to do. And I just decided that this isn’t the time. Our democracy is, you know, is at risk right now. It remains to be seen what the fallout of this particular election is, although I suspect it’s going to be extremely different from 2020, but it just felt like this was not the time to abandon this work. I’ve got two more years left in my term. I intend to see those all the way through and then figure out what’s next for me.

You can see the full interview online.

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New Mexico

New Mexico deserves speedier game commission appointments

Published

10 hours ago

January 9, 2026

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New Mexico deserves speedier game commission appointments

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New Mexico

What bills have been filed for New Mexico’s 2026 legislative session?

Published

22 hours ago

January 8, 2026

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What bills have been filed for New Mexico’s 2026 legislative session?

The governor sets the agenda for the session, including for the budget, so here is what they are looking at so far.

SANTA FE, N.M. — As the regular session of the New Mexico Legislature is set to begin Jan. 20, lawmakers have already filed dozens of bills.

Bills include prohibiting book bans at public libraries and protections against AI, specifically the distribution of sensitive and “Deepfake” images

Juvenile justice reform is, again, a hot topic. House Bill 25 would allow access to someone’s juvenile records during a background check if they’re trying to buy a gun.

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham sets the agenda and puts forth the proposed budget lawmakers will address during the session. The governor is calling for lawmakers to take up an $11.3 billion budget for the 2027 fiscal year, which is up 4.6% from current spending levels.

Where would that money go? More than $600 million would go to universal free child care. Meanwhile, more than $200 million would go to health care and to protect against federal funding cuts.

There is also $65 million for statewide affordable housing initiatives and $19 million for public safety.

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New Mexico

Understanding New Mexico’s data center boom | Opinion

Published

1 day ago

January 8, 2026

Press Room

Understanding New Mexico’s data center boom | Opinion

Paul Gessing, Rio Grande Foundation
| Las Cruces Sun-News

After years of failure to land a “big fish” business for New Mexico’s economy (or effectively use the oil and gas revenues to grow the economy) Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham with the help of her Economic Development Secretary Rob Black have lured no fewer than three large data centers to New Mexico. These data centers are being built to serve the booming world of Artificial Intelligence (AI), and they will have profound impacts on New Mexico.

It is our view that having these data centers locate in New Mexico is better than having them locate elsewhere. While we have many differences of opinion with this governor, we are pleased to see her get serious about growing and diversifying New Mexico’s oil-dependent economy albeit quite late in her second term.

Sadly, the governor and legislature have chosen not to use broad based economic reforms like deregulation or tax cuts to improve New Mexico’s competitiveness. But, with the failure of her “preferred” economic development “wins” like Maxeon and Ebon solar both of which the governor announced a few years ago, but haven’t panned out, the focus on a more realistic strategy is welcome and long overdue.

Currently, three new data centers are slated to be built in New Mexico:

Oracle’s Project Jupiter in Santa Teresa with an investment of $165 billion.
Project Zenith slated to be built in Roswell amounts to a $11.7 billion investment.
New Era Energy & Digital, Inc. While the overall investment is unclear, the energy requirement is the largest of the three at 7 gigawatts (that’s seven times the power used by the City of San Francisco).

What is a data center? Basically, they are the real-world computing infrastructure that makes up the Internet. The rise of AI requires vast new computing power. It is critical that these facilities have uninterrupted electricity.

That electricity is going to be largely generated by traditional sources like natural gas and possibly nuclear. That contravenes New Mexico’s Energy Transition Act of 2019 which was adopted by this Gov. and many of the legislators still in office. Under the Act electrical power emissions are supposed to be eliminated in a few years.

With the amount of money being invested in these facilities and the simple fact that wind and solar and other “renewable” energy sources aren’t going to get the job done. In 2025 the Legislature passed and MLG signed HB 93 which allows for the creation of “microgrids” that won’t tax the grid and make our electricity more expensive, but the ETA will have to be amended or ignored to provide enough electricity for these data centers. There’s no other option.

New Mexicans have every right to wonder why powerful friends of the governor can set up their own natural gas microgrids while the rest of us face rising costs and decreased reliability from so-called “renewables.” Don’t get me wrong, having these data centers come to New Mexico is an economic boon.

But it comes tempered with massive subsidies including a 30-year property tax exemption and up to $165 billion in industrial revenue bonds. New Mexico is ideally suited as a destination for these data centers with its favorable climate and lack of natural disasters like hurricanes, tornadoes, and floods. We shouldn’t be giving away such massive subsidies.

Welcoming the data center boom to New Mexico better than rejecting them and pushing them to locate in other states. There is no way to avoid CO2 emissions whether they happen here or somewhere else. But, there are questions about both the electricity demand and subsidies that must be addressed as New Mexico’s data center boom begins.

What will the Legislature, radical environmental groups, and future governors of our state do to hinder (or help) bring these data centers to our State? That is an open question that depends heavily on upcoming statewide elections. It is important that New Mexicans understand and appreciate these complicated issues.

Paul Gessing is president of New Mexico’s Rio Grande Foundation. The Rio Grande Foundation is an independent, nonpartisan, tax-exempt research and educational organization dedicated to promoting prosperity for New Mexico based on principles of limited government, economic freedom and individual responsibility

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