New Mexico Secretary of State launches election-season ‘good questions’ campaign

The New Mexico Secretary of State on Friday announced the launch of a new election-season campaign geared at answering voters’ questions.

The “good questions” campaign, according to a news release, was developed with Albuquerque-based Esparza Advertising and will appear as digital ads on a variety of sites, and on social media and radio. 

The state’s Sunshine Portal shows an approximate $64,600 contract with the agency by the SOS; Lindsey Bachman, the Secretary of State Office’s director of communications, legislative and executive affairs, said the campaign cost just under $60,000 before taxes.

The campaign, the Secretary of State’s office says, is intended to answer voters’ most common questions, all of which can be found on a dedicated webpage, and include queries such as: “Am I still registered?” and “Can I register on Election Day?

Other questions delve into more political terrain, such as “Can noncitizens vote?” (the answer is no) and “Have changes with USPS or at the federal level changed my ability to vote by mail this year?” (the answer is also no).

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“With everything being said about the election this year, I have been really concerned about voters getting bad information about the process that keeps them from casting a ballot,” Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver said in a statement. “We know that New Mexicans have good questions about our elections, and the truth is that New Mexico runs some of the most accessible, secure and accurate elections in the country. We want to cut through the noise and provide voters with more information about what makes our process so great as well as the facts they need to safely vote and trust that their vote counted.”

The office’s news release notes the new campaign follows Toulouse Oliver’s previous efforts to combat rising election misinformation, including a Rumor versus Reality webpage and the 2024 “seeing is no longer believing” campaign focused on AI misinformation in elections.