New Mexico Mercury

Some time before the recent municipal election the University of New Mexico contacted the city to see if, as usual, there would be a polling place at UNM, something which has happened during the 2007 election, the 2009 election, and the 2012 election. The University never heard back and there was no polling place to serve students and faculty.

A couple of nights ago your non-partisan city council decided to disenfranchise thousands of Albuquerque voters who have regularly polled at the campus. This is the same non-partisan council controlled by Republicans that created the new gerrymandered Council District Two.

Councilor Rey Garduno offered up an amendment ordering the city clerk, the sneering Amy Bailey, to set up a campus polling place. Debate about the amendment was fierce. Councilor Trudy Jones was either lying or grievously misinformed when she questioned how the council could possibly tell UNM that it had to offer a polling place to voters. What an arrogant question, when UNM had contacted the city before the last election to have an on-campus polling place. And especially in view of the long history of the on-campus vote at UNM.

The snide city clerk, Amy Bailey pouted that the amendment would require her to do things way beyond her feeble powers to control. The difficulties of training poll workers and the tortures of setting up a secure facility for our upcoming vote with all the real high-tech voting machines and all that—these challenges were beyond Bailey’s flagging powers, despite the fact there have been votes at UNM for a good number of years. Bailey also fudged by saying the UNM SUB had informed her there wasn’t “adequate space” for a voting location. This is a lie, as recent elections have repeatedly been held at UNM.
Garduno’s amendment went down to stealth defeat, and thousands of Albuquerque voters were deprived of their legal right to vote.

What is it that these Republicans offer besides limiting the vote by making people in the city show IDs, limiting the vote by disenfranchising Albuquerque University voters, tilting the election process through district gerrymandering, running character assassination political campaigns, and shutting down the US government in a vain and ill-fated attempt to stop health care for everyone? And then they pretend that reality doesn’t count, that facts don’t count, that people don’t count, that democracy doesn’t count.