New Mexico

On Tuesday, the Bipartisan Policy Center held its 2022 Elections Summit in Washington, D.C., where Democrat New Mexico Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver was a panelist. Toulouse Oliver joined moderator Carrie Levine, a story editor at election reporting site Votebeat.org, as well as Philadelphia City Commissioner Seth Bluestein, Nevada County, CA Clerk-Recorder-elect Natalie Adona, and U.S. Election Assistance Commissioner Ben Hovland. 

During the panel, Toulouse Oliver repeatedly took sly jabs at county commissioners, such as those in Otero County, who audited votes and also decertified potentially fraudulent election results and then were forcibly mandated to go back and certify upon the threats of removal.

She also spoke about the close relationship between her office and the media to “pre-bunk” so-called “election myths.” 

“The field of election administration, over time, has just become incredibly more professional, incredibly more diverse. It used to be, you know, whoever sort of the local political favorite was got the job of being election administrator in a jurisdiction,” she said.

Regarding her campaign to try and quell supposed misinformation, Toulouse Oliver said, “I’ll also add I think we started doing this pretty darn well in 2020: foreseeing the post-election challenges. We didn’t know exactly what they were going to be, but we did a good job as a community of ‘pre-bunking,’ if you will, some of the things we could see coming down the pipeline of, you know, ‘We’re not gonna know on election night, you know, because we have all of these critical states that are still gonna have ballots to count and this is how the process works.’ I think we did an even better job of that, and that isn’t just the work of election administrators.”

She then praised the media, telling the panel, “I think we did an even better job of that, and that isn’t just the work of election administrators. It’s also the work of the media, which has really invested incredible amounts of time and effort working with offices like mine and local election offices to get information — how does this actually work? — because the media wants to be good partners and helping us pre-bunk or debunk some of the election myths that are out there. As a result, I think the electorate, whether they want to be or not, is much more informed about how the election process works, and I think that significantly contributed to the success of the 2022 election and to the fact that we didn’t see as much strife, or we’re not seeing as much strife – We’re still immediate post-election 2022 — than we did in 2020.”

Then, Toulouse Oliver attacked citizens who asked for public records from her office, claiming their requests for data were political. She said, “When we’re dealing with not the normal level, I mean, any government office should expect and anticipate public records requests, and we should be responsive to them. That is not the question we are talking about here. We are talking about this coordinated, weaponized effort to make it so hard for us to fulfill those requests that we can’t do the rest of our job properly or we can’t fulfill the record requests properly. And that’s intentional. That is a tactic, and it is intended to keep us from being able to do our jobs properly.”

She added on that note, “like many states, we’re looking at how we can better craft our public records laws. For example, one thing we want to make sure, in my state, that we aren’t doing is giving away the keys to the castle, right? What is a public record that anybody should be able to just take a look at whenever they want, and what is something that is, you know, what we need to keep internal so that we can keep hackers from getting into our system, right? So we are taking a look at that, and I think those are conversations that are happening in legislatures throughout the country. But again, I don’t want to be a broken record, but as Ben said, it’s resources, resources, resources.  We do want to be able to give out this information, but we need to make it so we can all have an office that functions like Seth’s where they can focus on their work. We can focus on the work and not on fulfilling records requests.” 

Toulouse Oliver bashed local leaders who defy her edicts, saying, “I think county government is sort of the most obscure to folks. And I would like to start with just my commissioners understand what their job is. I don’t think they want me coming to their county telling them how to do dogs, dumps, and driving. Likewise, I don’t want them making election policy because that’s not their job.”

She concluded in her commentary on the panel, “So I think just demystifying local government is important. One thing I think was good about COVID — many bad things — is that I think that was part of the reason we did have such great turnout in 2020 because people really started to realize the impact that state and local government had n ther daily lives. And so whatever we can do… to continue to sort of expand that understanding is a plus.” 

Watch her remarks on the panel below: