SWOPblogger

For Immediate Release: July 24, 2008

Contact: Jonathan Rosen or Anna Deknatel, BerlinRosen Public Affairs, (646) 452-5637

Joann Gutierrez Bejar, Southwest Organizing Project, (505) 247-8832

New Mexico Law Is One of Harshest in the Nation

Severe Penalties Threaten to Shut Down Voter Registration Drives and Disproportionately Block Minorities from Voting in 2008

New Mexico – Today the Brennan Center for Justice, along with pro bono law firms Davis Polk & Wardwell and Freedman Boyd Hollander Goldberg & Ives, filed a lawsuit in state court in Albuquerque challenging a New Mexico law that significantly restricts the ability of voter registration groups to register new voters and threatens to block thousands of eligible New Mexico citizens from registering and voting in the 2008 elections as unconstitutional and inconsistent with federal and state law. Plaintiffs in the case are the American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD), the Federation of American Women’s Clubs Overseas Inc. (FAWCO), New Mexico Public Interest Research Group (NMPIRG), and the Southwest Organizing Project (SWOP). Plaintiffs typically register thousands of New Mexico citizens (especially low income, minority, disabled, and young citizens) to vote but have suspended or dramatically curtailed their operations as a result of the challenged law.

There are currently over half a million unregistered eligible voters in New Mexico. The suit claims that New Mexico’s law—New Mexico Statutes Annotated § 1-4-49, and New Mexico Administrative Rules §§ 1.10.25.7-10, both enacted in 2005—constitutes an unconstitutional burden on free speech and association by impeding civic groups from helping eligible voters to register.

“The law aggressively discourages civic organizations from helping New Mexico citizens to exercise their basic right to vote, and threatens voter registration drives across the state,” Robby Rodriguez from SWOP stated.

“New Mexico has enacted one of the most chilling and restrictive voter registration laws in the country,” stated Wendy Weiser, the Brennan Center’s Director of Voting Rights and Elections and one of the attorneys in the case. “In a year in which unprecedented numbers of Americans are interested in participating in our democracy, New Mexico should be welcoming new voters, not putting up barriers to their participation,” she added.

Read the rest of the press release here: Brennan Center

Some chatter from bloglandia:

Group hits Sen. Rawson with mailers, radio ad
By Heath Haussamen(Heath Haussamen)
The Synder mailer comes from SouthWest Organizing Project, while the Ulibarri mailer comes from the SAGE Council. The contribution-limits bill. Rawson said the 2007 contribution-limits bill would have restricted contributions from ...
Heath Haussamen on New Mexico Politics - http://haussamen.blogspot.com/

Quick Hits
By Democracy for New Mexico
(FAWCO), New Mexico Public Interest Research Group (NMPIRG), and the Southwest Organizing Project (SWOP) challenging New Mexico's voter registration rules that were enacted in 2005:. "New Mexico has enacted one of the most chilling and ...
Democracy for New Mexico - http://www.democracyfornewmexico.com/democracy_for_new_mexico/

Groups Challenge Law Restricting Nonprofit Voter Registration Efforts
(FAWCO), New Mexico Public Interest Research Group (NMPIRG), and the Southwest Organizing Project (SWOP). Plaintiffs ask that the 2005 law be declared unconstitutional and that the Secretary of State be barred from enforcing it. ...
OMBWatch Blogs - http://www.ombwatch.org

Labels: 2008 Elections, Democracy, Voter Registration, voting rights

Last year Tim Russert, that veteran Tele-Journalist, debate moderator and anchor of NBC's influential Sunday morning news show Meet the Press, predicted that the southwest and the rockies would decide this year's presidential Election. (As a side note: that would give the Richardson recent endorsement some weight, ah? See Richardson on MTP today.)

RUSSERT: Here is how the electoral college breaks down, in 2000 I said Florida, Florida, Florida.

CARLSON: Right.

RUSSERT: In 2004 I said Ohio, Ohio, Ohio.

In 2008 I am saying New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona and Nevada. If the Republicans—if the Democrats can win three of those four, they can be elected president.

He hasn't backed down from his assessment.

Last week, SWOPblogger brought you some news from pushbacknetwork.org, chronicling a convening of groups from the South, Southwest and Northeast United States to talk about civic engagement and electoral organizing strategies.

This week, we're pointing you to some other analysis and important info, considering NM's influential position in this year's election.

For more New Mexico analysis and important work in the state from Pushback, go here.

New Mexico’s population of 2 million residents is composed of a majority of people of color; the state is also home to the third highest poverty rate and a twenty-five percent child poverty rate. NM spends 5.7 times more per prisoner than per student and has the highest rate of uninsured children in the country.

For more on SWOP's civic engagement and electoral strategies go to Progressive Technology Project's VoterTechKit. (Click on the picture's below for video.)

See the video: "We went through a process with staff and members and also with ally organizations, namely SAGE Council and Soltari, which is a for-profit campaign consulting firm, to figure out a couple things. One, who we would be contacting and where we would be doing the voter contact work. […] In the discussions that our membership has had over the last few years, we know that – and also because of our mission – we know that the people we want to contact are largely people of color, they’re folks who have historically been disenfranchised and disempowered, they are as a result they’re unlikely voters, so they don’t normally vote in elections, they’re young people, and they’re largely low-income and working class folks. So that’s the who, the who that we’re targeting."

See the video: "We want to build base or engage voters in areas where elections might be competitive. So we feel that we might get more traction working in a race where there’s actually competition – so people are more in-tuned to be paying attention, there’s more signs, there’s more activity and so we feel we might get more traction out of being there. The other reason is that, regardless of who wins, we can go to the candidate who did win, and if it was competitive they probably would have won by a smaller margin, and we can go and talk to them and we can say, “We talked to voters...and this is what they said and this is why they came out and voted and they’re going to be holding you accountable.”

If you've read all the way here (and clicked on those links and videos!), you're probably ready to donate to SWOP, right? So what's stopping you? Those $5, $10, $20, $50, and $100 will do as good at SWOP as anywhere.

Together, we have the opportunity to make the real change we are all after. We can live up to our responsibilities to the democratic process (you know, not let those corporations decide everything), and confront and bridge the democracy divides of race, gender, class, region and religion that are a barrier to realizing our vision of community values (you know, as opposed to corporate values), and racial and gender equality and social and economic justice. Donate today.
Bill Richardson
Meet the Press
2008 Election
New Mexico

Labels: 2008 Presidential Election, Civic Engagement, Democracy, door to door organizing, voting

"Democracy doesn't end on Election Day." - Robby Rodriguez, South West Organizing Project

South by Southwest: Report back from Texas

“The knowledge and experience our three sister organizations (CVH, S. Echo and SWOP) bring to table is invaluable. This type of sharing and work is a corner stone to our learning and vital for building a strong movement.”
– Genaro Rendon

SWOP, CVH and Southern Echo, three Pushback Network anchor organizations from New Mexico, New York and Mississippi respectively, went to San Antonio Feb. 15-16 to support the Southwest Workers Union (SWU) in its 2-day training entitled, “’Mobilizing Grassroots Voting Power”. We had members of the Pushback Network collaborating together to assist a key grassroots network in a fourth state to build their organizing process from the bottom up. This assistance actually arose out of the SWU, SWOP and Echo South x Southwest Experiment that focused on building black-brown bridges across the south and southwest. Through this Experiment, the Pushback Network developed a relationship with SWU. All in all, a great time was had by all.

SWU was most interested in hearing how New Mexico, Mississippi and New York explained their different models of grassroots community organizing, both historically and programmatically, and how each state brought their community into the political process. SWU’s goal was both to understand what others have done and to see what it could take from each of the models that would be most useful in the south Texas context. What was interesting to me was that SWU was not seeking a singular black and white roll out of do-this and do-that, but an opportunity to obtain a more complex overview of vision and strategy, as well as the critical details of program, to assess the best that each of the models had to offer that flowed from the variety of approaches and experiences based on their different circumstances.

The Texas process brings to life one of the principal values that we projected from the outset as a goal of the Pushback process, and also in the South x Southwest process. The question was, can we build bottom up grassroots models of work that would not only further the work in our own states, but be useful to like-minded communities in other states? I think the answer is affirmative.

Reported to Pushbacknetwork.org by Mike Sayer, Southern Echo, MS

Labels: Civic Engagement, Clean Elections, Democracy, Elections, voting