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Maggie Toulouse Oliver

Maggie Toulouse OIiver is New Mexico’s 26th Secretary of State and served the people of New Mexico in this role since first being elected in 2016. She was first appointed to public office in 2007 when she became county clerk in New Mexico’s largest county, Bernalillo County. Elected to her first full term in 2008, Sec. Toulouse Oliver served 2 1/2 terms as county clerk until she was elected as secretary of state in 2016. 

Sec. Toulouse Oliver has been involved in politics and public policy for over two decades and has made public service the focus of her career. Her work has focused on increasing voter access, running efficient, secure, and fair elections, and bringing more transparency and increased ethical standards to government. 

Sec. Toulouse Oliver worked her way through college and graduate school. While earning her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in political science from the University of New Mexico, Sec. Toulouse Oliver worked for U.S. Sen. Jeff Bingaman in his D.C. office and on his reelection campaign in 2000. 

Since becoming Secretary of State she has implemented increased transparency rules for financial disclosure and campaign finance reporting, modernized the online campaign finance system, helped craft and pass good government legislation like same-day voter registration, automated voter registration, and the State Ethics Commission. Sec. Toulouse Oliver is a past president of the National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS), and has additionally served NASS as president-elect, treasurer, and chair of the elections committee. She is currently a member of the University of Southern California Annenberg Center’s Voter Communication task force, and an advisory board member for the Election Official Legal Defense Network co-founded by national election law experts Benjamin Ginsburg and Bob Bauer. She is also a Ph.D. Student in Political Science at the University of New Mexico and is a W.K. Kellogg Foundation Community Leadership Network Fellowship alumna. Most importantly, she is the proud mother of two sons, Christian and Max.

“They’re citizens. They’re professionals. They’re our neighbors. If we start to view our fellow citizens as our enemies, we’re lost.”
— David Becker (Republican push to recruit election deniers as poll workers causes alarm | June 30, 2022 – The Guardian)
“Election officials never get praised if elections go right and the wrath comes down on them if they do them wrong. When we saw election officials being prosecuted for just doing their jobs... we formed [EOLDN] and we do provide pro bono legal services to any election officials who need it.”
— Ben Ginsberg (Trump’s pressure on Pence more ‘unprecedented’ than ‘what we saw in Watergate’ | June 17, 2022 – MSNBC)
“Those who are threatening … these officials, whether they're full-time, whether they're volunteers, whether they're in positions of the most senior responsibility or they're simply on the staff — those who threaten them need to know they cannot act with impunity. There will be a defense and it will be a robust defense."
— Bob Bauer (Helping election officials who are threatened | March 14, 2022 – 60 Minutes Overtime, CBS News)
"What we are seeing developing now is a huge step backwards from a focus on professionalized election administration to a heavy level of political interference in the work of trained election professionals. Our hope now is to provide [election officials] with a resource I wish they didn't have to have, but one I think they have desperately needed."
— Bob Bauer (Election Workers Are Under Attack. A Group Of Lawyers Plans To Defend Them | September 8, 2021 – National Public Radio)
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