SWOPblogger

Since New Mexico went for President Bush by only 6,000 votes in 2004, anything that reduces registrations and turnout could affect the outcome in the swing state. Younger voters tend to favor Democratic candidates, and generally Democrats have tended to focus on fighting voter suppression, while Republicans have aimed their sights on voter fraud.

Tova Andrea Wang, vice president for research at Common Cause, expects the law will impact turnout among youth and people with disabilities. "Those are the communities that more often register to vote through third-party registration drives," said Wang. "Clearly, the groups feel that it is limiting their capacity."

Plaintiffs in the case are the American Association of People with Disabilities, the Federation of American Women's Clubs Overseas Inc., New Mexico Public Interest Research Group and the Southwest Organizing Project.

Although the law was in place in 2006, it has only become a major issue this year. "2008 is a special year because it's a presidential year, and there has been an extraordinary outpouring of interest," said Wendy Weiser, who runs the voting rights program at the Brennan Center for Justice and is working on the case. "A lot of civic groups want to do drives and are bumping up against the law."

The activists contend that because the law creates criminal penalties for failing to meet its requirements — which even supporters acknowledge are stringent — it discourages groups from collecting registrations.

"You have 48 hours to turn in a voter registration form," explained Weiser. "It's a misdemeanor if you don't. These penalties are assessable regardless of fault. Even if you did everything in your power but got sick or your boss didn't let you leave the office that would not insulate you."

Youth and student voter mobilization activists say that their efforts are hindered by the threat of penalties. "[The threat of criminal liability] intimidates students who simply want to get out on campus and register their friends to vote," said Sujatha Jahagirdar, program director of Student PIRG’s New Voters Project.

Defenders of the law say that the law's requirements address real problems that have surfaced in previous voter registration drives. "All the statutory provisions have a genesis in actual problems that the legislature dealt with," said Pat Rogers, a conservative election lawyer in New Mexico.

For instance, the requirement that forms be filed within 48 hours was designed to prevent organizations from holding them in insecure locations. In 2004 New Mexico voter registrations were stolen from an organization's office.

"[Outside groups] shouldn't be holding the registrations for long periods of time," said David Muhlhausen, senior policy analyst at the right-leaning Heritage Foundation. "They get lost, they get damaged. If the mandate was 72 hours they would probably complain about that."

Muhlhausen agreed that some of the provisions seemed arbitrarily restrictive, such as having to turn in registrations in groups of 50. "I find that a little strange," said Muhlhausen. "I'm not sure why it's not 100."

But, he said, the intent of the provision is legitimate: to prevent groups from dumping thousands of registrations on the board of elections shortly before the deadline, which can make it more difficult to weed out illegal ones.

An unusual feature of the situation in New Mexico is that while these suits are typically leveled at Republican-controlled state governments, as in the recent Supreme Court ruling upholding Indiana's voter identification requirement, the 2005 law was passed by a Democratic legislature and signed by Democratic governor and former presidential candidate and current vice presidential possiblity Bill Richardson — who seemed to back away from some of these provisions in his statement on the lawsuit.

"While there were many good measures in this omnibus election reform bill that the governor signed ... there may be merit to reviewing the voter registration process to ensure there are not undue hardships on people who are running legitimate voter registration efforts," he said in a statement.

Rogers, though, explained away that recalibration as presidential-year posturing. "There's a rumor he's interested in national office," joked Rogers. "He's going to figure out what public sentiment is before taking a stance [on the lawsuit.]"