SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) – A federal judge says New Mexico election supervisors and prosecutors discriminated against a Republican-backed group when they refused to release voter registration lists.
Friday’s decision prevents the state from refusing to release voter information to the Voter Reference Foundation, bolstering the group’s efforts to expand its free database of registered voters so groups and individuals can begin trying to find potential abuse or fraud.
State prosecutors plan to appeal the decision, said Lauren Rodriguez, a spokeswoman for the New Mexico Department of Justice.
The website VoteRef.com recently returned New Mexico rolls to a searchable database of registered voters — including street addresses, party affiliation and whether voters participated in the last election.
Election officials and privacy advocates in several states have raised alarms about efforts by several conservative groups to gain access to state voter rolls. They say the lists could fall into the hands of malicious actors and that voters could be dispossessed through intimidation, possibly canceling their registration to prevent their home addresses and party affiliations from being publicly revealed.
But Albuquerque-based U.S. District Court Judge James Browning ruled that state election regulators committed viewpoint discrimination and free speech violations when they denied the Voter Reference Foundation access to voter data and referred the case to state prosecutors.
The foundation’s VoteRef.com database contains voter data from more than 32 states and the District of Columbia. It is chaired by Gina Swoboda, chairwoman of the Arizona Republican Party and former president Donald Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign organizer in Arizona.
Browning previously ruled that New Mexico officials violated the disclosure provisions of the National Voter Registration Act by refusing to provide voter rolls to the same foundation, bypassing a provision of state law that limits the use of voter registration information.
VoteRef.com does not have a list of who people voted for. It maintains confidentiality under a program that protects victims of domestic violence or stalking.
The addresses also remain confidential for more than 100 publicly elected or appointed officials in New Mexico, including Democrats and Republicans, who are enrolled in a separate security program that was put in place after the December 2022 and January 2022 shootings at the homes of local lawmakers in Albuquerque. 2023.
