New Mexico Open Elections (NMOE) was founded in 2015 by former New Mexico State Representative and U.S. Diplomat, Robert “Bob” Perls. When Perls returned from serving abroad as a U.S. Diplomat with the Department of State in 2015, he recognized that the beacon of democracy he had been lauding over the previous 6 years in 4 countries was not shining quite as bright. With 20 or so former political supporters and friends, they tried to do a root-cause analysis of what was going wrong. Why was all the hyper-partisanship and political polarization locking up our decision-makers and ripping apart families and communities? What could we change to incentivize candidates and elected officials to actually talk and get something done?

They believed the root causes were (1) the closed primary system in New Mexico, (2) the gerrymandering, and (3) the never-ending money hunt. With Citizens United, it took reforming campaign finance off the table, so they focused on open primaries, and other issues like ranked-choice voting, independent redistricting, and legislative modernization. In 2022, after being powered solely by volunteers, NMOE hired its first professional staff member, Executive Director Sila Avcil, which has led to increased capacity and impact of our organization. We partnered with legislators on both sides of the aisle to be the second state in U.S. history to pass open primaries through the legislature in 2025 and get signed into law by the Governor.

In 2024, our sister organization NM Voters First 501(c)4 was founded with the purpose and mission of supporting candidates that believe in empowering and enhancing our democracy and encouraging legislators to support fair and equitable elections that expand peoples’ political voice. As an advocacy organization, and working independently of NMOE, NM Voters First endorsed and recommended candidates that supported semi-open primaries in the 2024 elections. The creation of NM Voters First also expanded the lobbying efforts for semi-open primaries, leading a coalition effort to successfully pass SB16 in the 2025 New Mexico Legislative Session.