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This year, more voters showed up at the polls during Tuesday’s runoff election than did for October’s citywide mayoral election.
According to data from the Office of the City Clerk, 87,296 registered Albuquerque voters cast their ballots during the runoff election, representing a 24 percent citywide turnout. This is a 4 percent increase from the mayoral election on Oct. 8, in which 71,091 people voted.
Albuquerque City Clerk Amy Bailey said the turnout increase during the runoff cycle was evident early on. She said about 44,000 people voted early, which was a “phenomenal early voting turnout.”
“People have a great interest in voting,” Bailey said. “They are interested in the subject matter as well as the runoff election.”
Paul Heh, who ran as a Republican mayoral candidate in October, said the abortion ban decision magnetized more voters into polls.
“I think the city is pretty tired of politics and they now realize that the politics affect them and they need to be involved in this process,” he said. “The abortion issue is a passionate issue on both sides. That’s the reason for the high voter turnout.”
On Tuesday, Albuquerque voters turned down the Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Ordinance, which would have banned abortion after 20 weeks, excepting situations in which the mother’s life is endangered by the pregnancy. As of press time, 55 percent of all city voters rejected the ordinance, while 45 percent voted for it.
Heh said he tried to put the abortion ban vote on the ballot for the mayoral election but was turned down by the City Council.
“The only involvement I did is I tried to get it on the ballot for the mayoral election,” he said. “I did go to the City Council to do that because I knew it would have been a huge voter turnout even if people vote for or against. Whichever you are, you would have gone out and voted … They didn’t want to do that. They wanted to play politics.”
Heh said that if the abortion ban was placed on the ballot during the mayoral election, more people would have voted in October. And he said it would have altered Republican Mayor Richard Berry’s victory for a second term.
”I think it should have been on the ballot for the mayoral election,” he said. “I’m not saying I would have won, but we would have had a much better cross-section of the city and would have seen actually what we really wanted deciding who was going to run the city for the next four years.”
Although the abortion ban lost during the runoff election, Heh, who identifies as Republican, said the vote will end up like the Second Judicial District Court’s August ruling on same-sex marriage in Bernalillo County.
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“Regardless of whether it passes or it gets defeated, it’s not going to end here,” he said. “Everybody knows that this is going to go on to the courts and courts and courts, filing all the way up to the (New Mexico) Supreme Court, where it’s all going to be decided.
