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A group of New Mexico lawmakers and voting rights advocates renewed redistricting meetings this month with a goal of preventing the sort of gerrymandering being promoted in neighboring Texas. The 2025 New Mexico Redistricting Task Force wants to be ready with recommendations when the Legislature redraws the state’s political maps at the end of the decade.

Dick Mason, Fair Districts for New Mexico project manager, said they're leaning toward advocating for an independent commission.

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"We are going ahead; we've removed the congressional redistricting from our proposed constitutional amendment," he explained. "We knew that was a no-starter, so we are just looking for the state Senate and House and our Public Education Commission."

New Mexico voters currently favor Democrats, who control the governorship, state Senate and House of Representatives. In recent years, many Republican candidates have failed to gain traction despite support from the oil and gas industry – a significant contributor to the state's budget. The task force is a project of New Mexico's nonpartisan League of Women Voters and first began its work in 2020.

A battle over redistricting in Texas has dominated the recent news, as GOP lawmakers push to redraw voting maps that would favor Republicans. That led Governor Gavin Newsom, D-Calif., to threaten the same, hoping to counterbalance any wins in the Lone Star State. Mason said such moves erode voter confidence.

"Americans are so cynical about the political process, and all this does is feed it, and gerrymandering violates the 'one person, one vote.' In essence, your vote doesn't count; it's sort of a race to the bottom," he added.

Mason noted that an analysis from 2021 showed redistricting in New Mexico rarely occurs without "struggle, chaos, litigation and a great cost to taxpayers.”