Lawyers for the New Mexico Secretary of State on Wednesday asked the New Mexico Supreme Court to uphold a lower court’s decision to kick incumbent state Rep. Rebecca Dow (R-Elephant Butte) off the ballot for the June 2 primary election in a move that would leave the district with only a Democratic write-in candidate.
A state district court judge last week ruled to remove Dow from the ballot after Democrat Tara Jaramillo, who previously held Dow’s seat in the state House of Representatives while Dow mounted an unsuccessful gubernatorial campaign, argued that the incumbent inappropriately filed screenshots of her nominating petitions rather than the forms themselves.
At the time, Dow vowed to appeal and wrote on social media that the judge’s decision “came down to a dispute over paperwork—a technical issue that has now resulted in our district having no candidate on the ballot.”
Dow, who first won election to represent District 38 in 2016, appealed the decision to the state Supreme Court on Monday. In her appeal, she contended that the issue at hand is “at worst a formatting mistake.”
Jaramillo and Dow did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
In a Supreme Court filing Wednesday, Secretary of State general counsel Peter Auh wrote that Dow, indeed, fell “considerably short” of the requirements to make the ballot.
In addition to not being the forms required to run for office, Auh argued that Dow’s screenshots do not contain critical information to be a candidate, such as the addresses and voter registration status of the people who signed the nominating petitions.
Jaramillio’s attorney, former state lawmaker Daymon Ely, wrote in a filing that Dow “failed to accomplish this relatively simple task” of filing the correct nominating paperwork.
