As politicians and lobbyists get settled into this year’s legislative session, New Mexico Open Elections and NM Voters First Executive Director Sila Avcil is pressuring politicians to take steps toward implementing semi-open primary elections in the state. Right now, only voters who are registered with a major party are eligible to vote in primary elections, and Avcil seeks to change that.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Q: What is your priority for this session?
A: Our No. 1 priority this session is to pass a semi-open primaries bill. And we have a bill number, Senate Bill 16, and it would allow for independents to participate in primary elections without added barriers. So right now, independents have to go through same-day registration in order to vote in primaries, and they have to register with the major party of their choosing. Whereas under our bill, they wouldn’t have to go through same-day registration. They would just show up and request the ballot of the party’s primary that they want to participate in. Thirty-eight states have some form of open primary. There’s fully open primaries, or there’s one ballot, or there’s semi-open primaries. There’s some states that have non-partisan voter registration. Out of all those, we think that semi-open is best for New Mexico.
Q: How would this change things?
A: Right now in New Mexico, we have about 343,000 independent voters. That is more people than the population of Las Cruces and Santa Fe combined. These independents are young people. They are the future of our world, and they need to feel included in every election that they take. We also have 50% of veterans that are excluded nationwide in primaries. There’s also Latino and Asian American communities, and in New Mexico, this also includes Indigenous communities that tend to register disproportionately in New Mexico. So what this bill would do is make it easier for these demographics to participate in primaries, because now they don’t have to go through an added step, which is the administration. They would just merely show up and say, ‘I want to vote today as a Democrat’ or ‘I want to vote as a Republican today’ in the primary. And these elections are publicly funded, so if you’re a Democrat and I’m an independent, we’re paying the same amount of taxes for elections to take place in our state. The system is telling independents that you’re paying the same amount of taxes, but you actually have to go through this added hoop, which is, in my opinion, taxation without representation. Because only 1% of voters tend to use same-day registration to vote in primaries. In 2024, only 17% of registered voters voted in the primaries, and 17% statewide is not representation.
Q: What makes New Mexico unique when it comes to elections?
A: In 2024, we won No. 1 in the nation for election administration, thanks to our amazing secretary of state. We know that our elections are healthy, that they’re accurate, that there’s no outside involvement going on in the administration of the elections. We’re usually No. 50 in many things, but this is one thing that New Mexicans should totally take pride in.
In our primaries, we’re in a minority of having only registered partisans being able to participate in primaries. So I think once we open the primaries, independents will join the majority of the country in having better access.
Q: What challenges have you had to overcome?
A: As it goes, for any issue ever, there is information and there’s misinformation. My main job has been tackling this misinformation or misunderstanding of things. People think that when I say semi-open, they think that now Democrats can choose a Republican ballot. That has never been part of the bill. Or they think people are going to come and infiltrate primaries now: If I’m any given party, then they’re going to vote for the weak candidate in the primary so that they can vote for whatever candidate in the General. And we have all kinds of data to back: That does not happen. When you let people vote, they vote their conscience and not in opposition to something.
Q: What’s next for the organization if this bill is passed?
A: We go straight into public education efforts. We will be working very closely with county clerks and the Secretary of State’s Office to make these independents aware of their new given rights of the world without a barrier.
This story was published by New Mexico Political Report as part of a collaboration between newmexico.news and UNM’s Statehouse Reporting Project.
