On February 24, New Mexico Secretary of State Diana J. Durbin noted that New Mexico’s election code does not have any authorization for a straight-ticket device on general election ballots, and she declared “I will follow the law”. Since the law does not provide for a straight-ticket device, she won’t provide for one.

As noted earlier, the legislature this year considered a bill to authorize a straight-ticket device, but that bill didn’t pass and the legislature has since gone home for the year.

Past Secretaries of State in New Mexico have put a straight-ticket device on the ballot, even though there was no authority to do that. The bill considered by the legislature this year would have provided that a straight-ticket device would only be given to parties that had at least two statewide nominees. Minor parties in New Mexico very seldom have as many as two statewide nominees, because even after a convention party is ballot-qualified, the state demands a separate petition for each of its nominees (other than its presidential nominee). For example, in 2012, if any of the ballot-qualified convention parties wanted to have a nominee for U.S. Senate, they would need a petition of 6,018 valid signatures.