Brief Analysis of Proposed Constitutional Amendment 1
2014
Summary of Proposed Constitutional Amendment 1
Constitutional Amendment 1 would amend Article 7, Section 1 of the Constitution of New Mexico to replace the prohibition against holding school elections with any other election with a more limited prohibition against holding school elections with partisan elections. If the amendment is adopted by the voters, school elections could be held at the same time as nonpartisan elections, including municipal elections, bond elections, conservancy district elections and other special district elections. Pursuant to Article 7, Section 3 of the Constitution of New Mexico, a proposed amendment to this section of the constitution must be ratified by the affirmative vote of three-fourths of the people voting on the amendment. Background and Information Regarding School Elections
One of the national points of controversy during the period when the Constitution of New Mexico was being drafted was whether women should be granted the right to vote. An initial step toward women's suffrage that many states adopted was to allow women to vote in school elections, and New Mexico continued this trend. Accordingly, school elections, which are financed by each school district, were separated from other elections to facilitate the administration of those elections in which women were allowed to vote and those in which they were not. In 1920, New Mexico's women's suffrage provision was superseded by the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which granted women the right to vote in all public elections. Subsequent amendments to the Constitution of New Mexico brought the language up to date, but did not change the requirement that school elections be held separately from other elections.
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