By MORGAN LEE (Associated Press)
New Mexico election officials broke the law by not giving voter rolls to a conservative group for its public online database, as ruled by a federal judge in Albuquerque-based U.S. District Court Judge James Browning's decision on Friday.
The judge's opinion and order mostly favored the Voter Reference Foundation and its attempts to expand a free database of registered voters so that groups and individuals can search for potential irregularities or fraud.
Election officials in multiple states and privacy advocates have raised concerns about conservative groups aiming to access state voter rolls, worrying that the lists could be misused and voters could be intimidated or disenfranchised.
New Mexico's election law prohibits the public release of voter registration data, limiting its use to political campaigning and noncommercial government purposes. However, Browning ruled that this system places a heavy burden on the circulation of voter data in the public and violates federal disclosure requirements.
Browning wrote, "The data sharing ban largely deprives individuals and entities of the ability to engage with disclosed records in such a way that facilitates identification of voter registration-related irregularities."
This ruling builds on a federal appeals court decision in February that required Maine to share its voter list with another conservative-backed group, the Public Interest Legal Foundation, which is conducting independent audits by comparing voter rolls in different states.
The VoteRef.com database by the Voter Reference Foundation currently includes information from 32 states and the District of Columbia. It is managed by Gina Swoboda, who organized former President Donald Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign in Arizona and became chair of the Arizona Republican Party in January.
Gina Swoboda stated via email that the court's decision upholds the public's right to access vote rolls and ensure proper voter list maintenance, as intended by the National Voter Registration Act's public disclosure provision.
Swoboda did not specify when the New Mexico voter list might be posted online. The foundation obtained the voter rolls through a vendor and first published the records online in 2021, leading to a potential prosecution referral. The foundation removed the information and filed a lawsuit.
The New Mexico secretary of state’s office plans to challenge the order, according to agency spokesman Alex Curtas.
Maggie Toulouse Oliver, who is a Democrat and the Secretary of State, will keep working hard to support the safeguarding of voters' personal information and to encourage voter participation, as expressed by Curtas in an email.
Curtas approved parts of the judge’s decision that rejected the foundation’s claims that New Mexico violated free speech rights by limiting the use of voter information.
Groundless accusations of widespread voter fraud, largely driven by Trump's belief that the 2020 election was stolen, are motivating conservative groups to seek voter rolls through lawsuits in various states, including Pennsylvania.
The Pennsylvania Office of Open Records declined to release voter information to the Voter Reference Foundation, fearing that making it public could increase the risk of identity theft or misuse of the information for every registered voter.
Pennsylvania officials won in state court, and in February, the foundation filed a lawsuit in federal court to obtain the voter rolls, citing provisions of the National Voter Registration Act.
