Supreme Court keeps candidates on ballot
The N.M. Supreme Court building in Santa Fe
Legislative incumbents and other candidates who failed to list district or division numbers on nominating petitions won’t be penalized.
The N.M. Supreme Court ruled this afternoon that legislative incumbents and other candidates who failed to list the district or division number of the seat they were seeking on nominating petitions would not be removed from the ballot.
The unanimous decision came in spite the law stating that nominating petitions that lacked those numbers at the time the petitions were signed by voters “shall be invalid.”
Here’s more from the New Mexico Telegram:
“Lawyers for those who failed to put the district numbers on their nominating petitions argued that the law was vague and pointed out differing decisions by District Court judges on the issues. Those who wanted the candidates off the ballot said the law was clear and that candidates would be removed from the ballot for failing to adhere to the new law.
“The high court said there was ambiguity in the law, according to KRQE’s Katie Kim.”
As NMPolitics.net has reported, at least 12 candidates who filed to run in the June 5 primary, including several sitting state legislators, failed to comply with the new law that requires that district or division numbers be listed on their nominating petitions.
Does anyone have the power to remove a Supreme Court Justice in New Mexico other than doing the impossible at the voting booth?
Still no opinion?
Tyler, excellent link/point in your April 10 2012, 9:36 comment.
How blatant can it all be?
I’m a lttle surprised that the Court opined that the meaning of the word ‘shall’ was ambiguous …
sooo………………..any orders or opinions released yet? I don’t find anything on the supreme court website.
Sorry that last line should read ….so the Courts don’t have to figure out an excuse on how to not uphold those laws too?
Poor Dianna Duran, there she is charged and oathed up to uphold laws while similtaneously watching a Court of Justices who do not. New members of the Gary King and Mary Herrera club? btw, any word on the criminal investigation of former Secretary of State Mary Herrera – or is it being swept under a carpet so the Courts don’t have to figure out an excuse to uphold those laws?
Just more examples of corruption and cronyism at the highest levels in our state’s sorry excuse for government. This court is inept and corrupt and should be removed, if an average citizen were to violate the laws they would throw the book at us, but for their political cronies in the professional politician clique they look the other way and have no intention of enforcing the spirit and letter of the law. Disgusting display by these so-called “justices”.
EW-aif, I read a few cases that suggest more than leniency. I think the most telling is State ex rel v. Gallagher. There, our fine court held that substantial compliance with the law regarding signatures on the ballot makes the signature valid. If the Court held in these recent cases that substantial compliance with the law means the petition is still valid, then the Court is 100% destroying the plain meaning of the statute. Stare decisis has nothing to do with a law that wasn’t effective until 2011, as there has been no case on this issue.
Again, I still want to read the opinion to see what twisted logic those up north used in concocting this decision.
I’m presuming the ambiguity lies with the SOS’s promulgated form. That is, she didn’t have a “district” space, so people didn’t think one was required. That’s the only argument I see in this whole debacle.
/the state of NM seems to be rather debacle-prone
Tyler – I understand your point. It isn’t ambiguous at all.
New Mexico should change it’s State Motto to; Laws? What laws?
*Be careful citizens of New Mexico who don’t understand tax long forms and all those pesky schedules, if you fail to fill those out correctly you still do face jail time.
*Thank you Mr. Haussamen for the direct and concise clarity of this entry, it is as easy to understand as the law those candidates, well for lack of better wording, compromised.
Tyler, the Election Handbook is a friggin’ 313 pages long. I sure didn’t read it before going door to door. Again, if the SOS included a note alerting candidates about the changes made since the last campaign season, it would help. Or if the SOS had read the thing and made the needed change in the petition format, it would help.
Somewhere in the book there is, or used to be, a requirement that candidates had to put the signatures for each county on a separate page. There was even a line on the petition page to write in the county of the petition signer. That requirement got challenged two years ago and the 1–2 candidates that had mixed counties on their pages appealed and won. So the courts have a tradition of being lenient about this. Think “stare decisis” (a legal principle by which judges are obliged to respect the precedents established by prior decisions). The Supreme Court of the US (SCOTUS) may have abandoned that principal, but the SCONM has not.
“A nominating petition, including all signatures on the petition page, shall be invalid if any of the preceding information is not listed before the petition is signed by a voter or if any of the preceding information is altered.”
I cannot see how that language is ambiguous. Anyone?
/friggin non-textualists
Does anyone here know what this means for the District Attorney Amy Orlando? No one here at the office knows the answer.
All things considered, it was correct for the decision to be made by the SC not by various DA’s or District courts. One free pass this time. How could anyone expect a legislator to understand a law?
The root of the problem is the vagueness of the wording on the SOS petition form. It should be re-worded to read:
…. for the office of___________________, “district, (if any) _________,” etc.
Any future changes made by the legislature should include some wording such as “The NM nominating petitions shall be changed to reflect this change in requirements.”
Maybe the SOS should be required to pay all those legal fees, since the neglect initially originated with her office.
Now how about all those signature challenges?
Does anyone have a copy of the opinion?
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