Breaking News: NM Supreme Court Rules RCV Must be Implemented. Another BIG Win!

By paulgibson51 on January 9, 2018 • ( 2 )

Kudos, Kudos, Kudos to Maria Perez for her ceaseless advocacy on behalf of RCV. I am REALLY hoping that the City doesn’t now decide to appeal to the US Supreme Court, but I think I am jesting. Assuming this was the last City effort to stall RCV, it is time to put community education in gear.

The Supreme Court just announced that the City’s appeal will not be heard and so their petition to appeal has been denied. The game is over! It is time to move forward. Training times listed below. Details tomorrow, but wanted to get the good news out there asap. There is a lesson here. A coalition of organizations led by FairVoteNM and including Earth Care, Chainbreaker Collective, Democratic Socialists of America, Indivisible, and Retake Our Democracy applied pressure that resulted in the City advancing planning on RCV even while it appealed to the Supreme Court. There is no question as to how important constituent pressure was. Then there was the legal strategy led by FairVoteNM with a lawsuit to the District Court and a defense of the District Court’s verdict at the Supreme Court. Retake is proud to have been one of the organizations to submit an Amicus brief in both court cases. So advocacy at the local level can work. In the past few weeks, we have

Caused the Mayor to revise his plans to form a PNM partnership to solarize city facilities, something on which we will be reporting tomorrow now that we have seen the Mayor’s amendments;
Caused the City to reverse course and defend its election campaign disclosure law; and now
Ensured that the voters’ will prevails and RCV will be implemented in March.

In this morning’s blog, we wrote about how the strategy of a clear platform and goals and a engaged, educated constituency will be used at the State level, just as we have been employing it at the local level for months. Many more battles to fight, but it is good to feel a victory. Thank you, Maria Perez. RCV training times provided below.

A Series of FairVoteNM Training on RCV

Space limited to 20 participants per session. First come first serve. To RSVP please send an email to Maria Perez at mperez@fairvote.org and indicate which session you want to participate in at mperez@fairvote.org or call 505 550 0647.

Thursday Jan. 11 @ 12-1, 2-4, & 5-7 (at Chainbreaker- 1515 5th Ave)
Friday Jan. 12 @ 10-12, 1-3, & 3-5 (at La Farge Library- 1730 LLano St)
Saturday Jan. 13 @ 10-12, 1-3, & 4-6 (at EarthCare- Corner of Jaguar and Country Club)