Some voters have expressed concerns about immigration officers showing up at polling places. The Trump administration has said it has no plans to deploy agents to voting sites, but it wouldn't rule out sending officers to polling places under certain circumstances. But New Mexico officials seem prepared.
The state's attorney general and secretary of state issued a joint advisory earlier this month reminding voters that law enforcement is generally prohibited from entering a polling place. Still, there were reports from several states of federal law enforcement inside or near polling sites during this year's primaries.
And Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham signed S.B. 264 into law this year. That state law created civil and criminal penalties for any federal agent who interferes with the election process. The confusion about federal and state jurisdiction over elections has been coupled with a growing distrust of election officials in recent years.
On the transparency front, every single one of these processes are open to the public.New Mexico Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver
New Mexico Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse-Oliver shared some information about election security at a roundtable before this year's primaries.
"I'm proud to point out New Mexico currently ranks number one in MIT's election performance index. It's the only ranking of its kind that looks at election administration across the country, and it uses a variety of performance indicators that measure aspects of election administration, such as voter registration rates, ballot rejection rates, security protocols and more."
At the roundtable, Toulouse-Oliver also pulled back the curtain a bit regarding how ballots are counted.
"The first thing folks should know is that there is a ton of work that goes into the process of ensuring an accurate count on election night, the unofficial results that we post. County clerks and their teams are working all day long, and in the days leading up to election day, to process as many absentee ballots as they can, and then to process all the early voting results on election day."
Toulouse Oliver went on to detail the process of counting election day votes and the internal and external audits that happen after precincts close.
"On the transparency front, every single one of these processes are open to the public. These are not done behind closed doors. These are all publicly viewable processes, and so I think it's really important for folks to know that all of these different steps take place in a public sphere."
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Election 2026: special coverage from KSFR News
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