Want Latinos To Vote? Just Ask
Latino voter turnout is expected to reach record numbers in 2012. That’s according to a National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO) projection. The estimate is that 12.2 million Latino voters will go to the polls come November of 2012; more than any other election in the past.
It makes sense, given the record growth of Latino population.
NALEO came to the voter turnout conclusion by calculating past turnout increases and projecting them into the next presidential election. So all things being equal and all things remaining the same, it’s a safe call:
The NALEO Educational Fund projects that the Latino vote will increase 26% from 2008, and Latinos will account for at least 8.7% of the country’s voters.
California, Florida and Illinois are likely to see the greatest percentage increase in turnout since 2008. In three states – California, New Mexico, and Texas – at least one in five voters will be Latino, with the Latino share of the electorate in New Mexico reaching 35%.
But it’s not as easy as that.
We also know by past experience that not all Latinos that are eligible to vote do so. According to the same NALEO report there were 19.5 million Latinos eligible to vote (citizens, at least 18 years-of-age), but only half of them went to the polls either because they were not registered or didn’t go to the polls.
The registering part is relatively easy. With each election there is more and more voter registration work and awareness; the hurdles are voter ID laws that make it difficult for many of the elderly, lower income workers and young people to participate. The more difficult work will be in getting those registered voters to the polls on election day.
All you have to do is ask.
There’s a characteristic of the Latino community that could help in this regard, but it’s seldom mentioned in political circles. Republican’s like to point to the conservative nature of Latinos to say that they naturally belong in their ranks. Democrats extol the virtue of the Latino work ethic, and then famously leave it at that. But Latinos have a very strong sense of community, that begins in the family circle and extends to friends, work mates and neighbors, that could be used for voter turnout ends.
We know from studies that Latinos are more engaged with mobile communication devices and social media. And that’s because Latinos are inherently social and communicative, and internet access is more affordable through mobile devices.
Nothing beats the personal touch.
I’ve participated and coordinated many voter mobilization efforts and found that the best result comes from personally asking people to vote. You knock on their door, you meet them where they live, shop, worship and play, and you ask – face to face. Then you ask them to tell their family and friends, offer to remind them or provide a ride to the polls.
Politics by proxy, robo-calls and the like, are not as effective among Latino voters as the eyeball-to-eyeball ask. Especially now, with so much nasty rhetoric and so many laws that seem to target Latinos, citizen or not.
Latino voters are concerned with the economy, jobs specifically, education and health care. But you can’t get to those issues until you clear the immigration hurdle and everything that the nasty anti-immigration rhetoric brings with it.
The best way to do that is with the personal “touch.” I’ll be talking more about that in the days to come.
Follow Victor Landa on Twitter: @vlanda
[Photo By Tom Arthur]
