November 22, 2005

A nice parting gift

Who said losing an election was all that bad? At least you get a plate.

November 15, 2005

Voter ID battle shifting?

You might have read last month that the ACLU is challenging the city's photo voter ID requirement, on display for the first time in Tuesday's City Council runoff election in District 9.

Part of the ACLU's argument is that the law -- approved by voters on Oct. 4 -- creates two classes of voters because it only requires the IDs for voters at the polls. It doesn't address absentee voters.

Now, they're going to increase emphasis on another argument: that photo ID rules work to disenfranchise the poor or minorities, said Peter Simonson, executive director of the ACLU of New Mexico.

He believes they have a timely high court decision on their side.

The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Georgia last month upheld an injunction keeping the state of Georgia from enforcing a photo ID requirement for voters there.

According to the Washington Post the judge that issued the injunction, U.S. District Judge Harold L. Murphy, "likened the law to a Jim Crow-era poll tax that required residents, most of them black, to pay back taxes before voting. He said the law appeared to violate the Constitution for that reason."

The New Mexico ACLU branch has asked the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund to join the Albuquerque lawsuit as a plaintiff, said Nina Perales, the group's southwestern regional counsel. She didn't say whether MALDEF has decided to join the case.

The logic here is that if you're going to argue that minorities are affected by the law, it makes sense that that minorities be part of the group making the argument.

Meanwhile, local attorney Pat Rogers said he is working with some individuals who support the voter ID law. Rogers was one of attorney representing a group of Republicans that, prior to the November 2004 Presidential election, wanted Secretary of State Rebecca Vigil-Giron to comply with state law governing voter registration.

"I just don't think it's appropriate to raise the racial angle every time the ID matter comes up," Rogers said. "I don't know, and certainly they haven't shown me, this impacts Hispanics more than any other group or so on. It's real easy to make that claim but it's somewhat poisonous to the debate."

November 01, 2005

Maybe the paint was on sale?

You might have been in bed or watching the last quarter of Monday Night Football when city crews went about adding lanes to Montano Road last night.

It wasn't but 12 hours after a judge dissolved a restraining order on the project that Martin Chavez and Co. ordered the section from Fourth Street to Rio Grande Boulevard to become four lanes.

At 3 p.m. news conference yesterday, Chavez seemed noncommital on when the work would start. The city had to determine whether the work would need to go to bid, whether there were any available contractors, he said.

The work happened at night, not to surprise people but to avoid disrupting traffic, Chavez said this morning.

It also was a sign that Chavez's overwhelming reelection on Oct. 4 pushed his confidence to new levels.

Judge Theresa Baca, while noting that she doesn't have authority over legislative bodies, suggested the city withhold from restriping until City Council debates a bill by Debbie O'Malley. Her bill, to be on Monday's council agenda, is based on a recently released study suggesting Montano be two all-purpose lanes with one high occupancy vehicle lane.

Chavez, in reply Monday, said this: "The report that is more important is what happened on Oct. 4. I campaigned on four lanes. The public issued its report."

Such bravado led to responses like this one from O'Malley, who represents the North Valley and the residents along the Fourth Street area opposed to adding traffic into their neighborhoods.

"He will literally be out of control if people don't start to reign him in," she said this morning. "People have got to start calling him on this stuff or we'll have a little emperor on our hands."

Chavez believes he's a rare type of elected official: "I keep my campaign promises."

Which one you agree with is likely a result of which side of the Rio Grande you call home.

Here's what some Trib readers had to say.