New Mexico: Judge allows recall of two Raton School Board members to go forward

A state judge has ruled that petitioners can start gathering signatures against two Raton school board members, President Sheila Castellini and Secretary Michael Anne Holland. Two current school board members Art Salazar and Art Armijo, and Raton school staff members, signed affidavits to start the recall.

Raton has recently seen a spate of recall threats, including against the Mayor and the City Council.

The two members are accused of violating the Code of Ethic, having a lack of professionalism toward board members and school staff and engaged in “micro-managing the district."

Interesting wrinkle here:

In order to force a recall election involving a board member, a petition against that person must contain the signatures of no less than one third of the number of people who voted on the office in question at the last election. When they were last elected in 2011, Castellini and Holland were each unopposed. Castellini received 122 votes and Holland received 121. When rounding is done, one-third of each of those vote totals equals 41, which would be the number of signatures Hestand and Stuart would have to collect on each petition in order to force a recall election on each board member.