ALBUQUERQUE- On the same day that New Mexico electors gathered in Santa Fe to officially cast New Mexico’s votes for president, Donald Trump’s campaign filed a suit over New Mexico’s use of drop boxes in the elections 2020.
The federated lawsuit states that Maggie Toulouse Oliver, the New Mexico Secretary of State violated state election code by allowing voters to deposit finished absentee ballots in drop boxes at polling places instead of handing them to the location’s presiding judge personally.
Ballot boxes were installed across the state this fall using government funding from the CARES Act in an attempt to reduce the number of voters gathering at voting locations in the middle of COVID-19 pandemic.
The Republican Party of New Mexico filed a lawsuit over the state’s use of drop boxes in mid-October, demanding video tracking for all drop boxes and charging two-county clerks of slack security measures. The party took back its complaint after Toulouse Oliver’s office reiterated previously guide county clerks on their use.
The lawsuit proclaims that the drop boxes should be subject to similar requirements as “protected containers” under the law.
The complaint asks the court to instruct a delay in certifying New Mexico’s electoral vote, which took place on Monday and orders a statewide survey of New Mexico’s absentee ballots, including inspection of every voting location where a drop box was installed.
The Trump campaign also strives to isolate all absentee ballots deposited in drop boxes. And for those voters to be contacted to verify that they, a caretaker or a family member dropped it off personally, and the invalidation of “unlawful dropbox ballots” or even all the absentee votes in a county.
Democratic vice-presidential nominee Kamala Harris and presidential nominee Joe Biden won New Mexico’s popular vote by nearly 12 percentage points in the 2020 elections, insuring him the state’s five Electoral College votes.
