The Democrat candidate, Jerome Block, Jr. was nominated in a 6-way primary in which he received 23% of the vote, and may have been mistaken for his father (Jerome Block, Sr.) who had previously served for 18 years on the commission or its predecessor agency.

During the campaign he was under attack for misreporting campaign expenditures (he and his father were indicted earlier this month). He had paid $2500 out of public campaign funds to a county clerk who happened to be a member of a band that never performed at a campaign rally.

The presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney of the Green Party received 17 votes in Los Alamos County (0.15%) and good for a 6th place finish behind Obama, McCain, Nader, Barr, and Baldwin.

In Santa Fe County, she received 148 votes (0.20%), but did finish ahead of Chuck Baldwin.

New Mexico should eliminate partisan primaries like Washington, Louisiana, and Nebraska have done, and the legislature has proposed in California.

With our restrictive national laws and undemocratic debate structure in place, it only follows that it is extremely difficult to garner enough votes at the top ticket level to base qualifications for state ballots on . . . especially when those laws vary from state to state and exist at the discretion of lawmakers already aligned with the two major parties.

That would grant automatical ballot access to about six different parties every four years.

You are interpreting it to say that a party that would be classified as a “major political party” is therefore a “qualified party”. One might as well argue that a party that would be a “minor political party” is therefore a “qualified party”.

Instead, the requirement is that to be either a “major” or “minor” political party, one must be a a qualified party. And the Green Party was disqualified due to their low performance at two consecutive elections (under 1-7-2).

Brown v. Bd of Ed 1954