I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
According to Dr. Michael McDonald of George Mason University, early voting totals were up nearly 12 percent this year from the 2004 presidential election. In New Mexico, 33 percent of voters used mail-in ballots and didn’t step foot in a school gym or cafeteria to cast their ballots.
This is probably attributable to the emphasis of the Barack Obama campaign on early voting. In New Mexico, Obama surrogates held a series of early voting rallies throughout the state to encourage supporters to get out to vote before Election Day. Democratic elected officials from Gov. Bill Richardson to State Auditor Hector Balderas to Lt. Gov. Diane Denish highlighted these rallies and, leading by example, voted early.
Out of the 519,295 New Mexico voters who took advantage of early voting, 347,159 still had the experience of going to the polls and used in-person early voting. The rest, all 172,136, used absentee ballots.
In 2008, according to McDonald, who used the Associated Press Elections Research and Quality Control Group numbers, 62.3 percent of the votes cast in the 2008 election were cast either early or mail-in. In 2004, that number was 50.6 percent.
