By MERILEE DANNEMANN
Triple Spaced Again
© 2024 New Mexico News Services
Early voting has started in New Mexico.
Before you head to the voting booth or fill out your mail-in ballot, your first stop should be nmvote.org, on the Secretary of State website. From that page you can obtain a sample ballot, which will show you everything that’s up for a vote in your district.
In this general election we are not only voting for president but also one United States senator, all our members of Congress, the entire state Legislature, both House and Senate, and about half of our elected local officials including county commissioners. The other half will be up for election two years from now. There will also be local bond issues.
You might want to look first at the proposed constitutional amendments.
There are four amendments proposed to the state constitution. For an impartial analysis, go to the nmlegis.gov website, click on Publications, then click on Constitutional Amendments, Arguments For and Against, prepared for the public by the Legislative Council Service.
Amendments 1 and 2 both propose changes in property tax exemptions for veterans who are homeowners.
New Mexico provides two levels of exemption: A $4,000 exemption for all veterans and a complete exemption from property tax for 100% disabled veterans.
Amendment 1 expands the number of veterans who would be eligible for the disabled exemption to include those with partial disability. Amendment 2 expands the amount of the basic veterans’ exemption from $4,000 to $10,000 and adds a mechanism for automatically increasing the exemption. (Disclosure: I benefit from the basic exemption, as my late husband was a veteran.)
I recommend voting NO on both of these. These changes would decrease property tax for veterans, but would cause a slight increase in property tax for everyone else, including other residents whose income is just as low. They would also reduce revenue for the counties and other local government budgets, and, to simplify a very complicated discussion, the counties are already cash-strapped.
If we want to honor veterans, there are other ways to do it.
I also don’t like Amendment 4, which would allow counties to set the salaries of their elected officials, which now are set by the Legislature. I am not commenting on Amendment 3.
The League of Women Voters guide is online at centralnmvoterguide.org or Vote411.org. You can find information about all the candidates for public office at all levels plus discussions of the amendments.
Voting for judges: For many voters, this is the hardest thing because most of us don’t know enough about the individual judges.
In New Mexico we select judges via a hybrid system.
Most judges start off by being appointed when a vacancy occurs. Then they have to run in one contested partisan election, and if they win that one then thereafter we only vote yes or no on whether to retain them. In other words, no partisan contest after the first.
To help you decide on retention, you can check The New Mexico Judicial Performance Evaluation Commission, nmjpec.org. This commission evaluates all judges who are up for retention and makes the evaluations public so we can have some confidence in how we vote.
One final thought.
This will be a terribly contentious presidential election. If you are still undecided about how to vote for president, please make a decision. Don’t leave it blank and don’t vote for a third party.
One of two major party candidates will become the next president of the United States. One of those two candidates has said repeatedly that he intends to dispute the results if they don’t make him the winner. The post-election process will be easier on all of us if the results are clear.
Contact Merilee Dannemann through www.triplespacedagain.com.