Last Thursday four residents from Socorro, NM (with help from GOP lawyers) filed suit against Socorro County Clerk Audrey Jaramillo (a Democrat).

What was really going on, of course, is a part of a GOP effort in the state to deny newly registered voters the right to vote. Why? Because of the 100,000 or so newly registered voters in the state, 42% are Democrats, only 24% Republican (and about 30% indy). They had taken parts of NM election code out of context and wanted the judge to rule in their favor with a minimum of publicity, thereby causing chaos on election day when newly registered voters would have the onerous task of proving their identity on election day (they demanded that newly registered voters be marked specially in the rolls so that poll workers could ask for proof of ID).

They had stipulated what would be considered proof of identity (driver's license, utility record, bank account records, government income, or pay check), and if their proof disagreed in the smallest degree with what was in the voter registration record, they'd be denied a vote. If absentee ballot voters didn't do everything exactly right, and send proof of id with the ballot, their ballot would be invalidated. Also they would never be notified that their ballot was invalidated, apparently. None of this is actually NM law, mind you. You can be sure these suits would never have been brought had Republican registrations outstripped Democratic registrations among new voters.

The hearing was held this morning, and fortunately I didn't have to work today. Notified by other local Dem and progressives late yesterday, we managed to scrounge up about a dozen people to come to the hearing to sit on Ms. Jarmillo's side of the court (only one or two were present on the plaintiff side).

Imagine our suprise when the plaintiffs withdrew their case "with prejudice" (I'm told they made a tactical error, and now they in effect admit they were wrong and can't refile with these plaintiffs). The judge was miffed since he'd spent most of yesterday reading up on the case. The whole thing didn't last more than ten minutes.

The reason given by the plaintiffs was that the NM Supreme Court would be hearing a very similar case within the next week or two, and they didn't wish to waste the court's time.

The reason given by one of the defense lawyers (who was representing a local client who was going to intervene on behalf of the defense), "they tucked tail and ran, because they saw us, and all of you (in the audience), and didn't want the bad publicity and knew they would lose."

What we did do is tromp down to the two local newspapers as a group and registered our outrage that Republicans were trying to in effect bring Jim Crow to Socorro County to the court reporters (perhaps a wee bit overblown, but not in spirit... this was an attempt at voter disenfranchisement plain and simple).

The sad thing is that while the GOP lawyers are losing these cases in NM, they are so far winning the publicity battle. Most people really believe that this is about voter fraud. We hope by getting the ear of the reporters we'll at least get the word out on what is really going on.