Low Latino Voter Turnout Would Send ‘Terrible Message,’
By Griselda Nerávez, Voxxi
Not doing so would “send a terrible message not only to the country but to ourselves that somehow we don’t respect ourselves enough to act,” National Council of La Raza’s President and CEO Janet Murguia told VOXXI. “That is a terrible message that we’re sending to our young people. It’s a terrible message for us to send to those folks who are in the shadows and who are counting on us.”
At a panel discussion titled, “From Voto to Voz: Harnessing the Power of the Latino Electorate,” Murguia spoke to hundreds at NCLR’s annual conference about the importance of delivering the Latino vote. She said Latinos must not only do it for themselves, but also for the 11.5 million undocumented immigrants “who want and need us to speak out for them.” Not turning out to vote, she said, sends them “a terrible message that somehow we don’t get it and we don’t care.”
For years, Latino organizations like NCLR have been mobilizing to increase Latino voter participation by investing in efforts to register new voters and motivating them to head to the polls. This year is no different.
Through its Mobilize to Vote campaign that launched in March, NCLR hopes to register 180,000 Latino voters and reach out to 250,000 Latino voters to motivate them to vote. Such efforts include going door-to-door in Latino neighborhoods and advocating against voter suppression laws.
Murguia said this year’s presidential election is critical for Latinos.
“If there was ever a moment for us to step up in the course of history of this country and for our community, it is now and on election day in November,” she said.
But Steven Camarota, director of research for the Washington, D.C.-based research institute Center for Immigration Studies, said he’s heard such comments over and over again for two decades now.
“People always talk about the Latino vote and how this election is going to be a break with the past, but it’s not,” he said. “There’s no reason to think that it will be.”
Camarota said though there is an upward trend in the percentage of eligible Latinos who vote, the percentage remains well below what is needed to make a big impact in the elections, especially in states where Latinos make up a smaller fraction of voters.
In the 2008 presidential election, 49.9 percent of eligible Latinos voted, up from 47.2 percent in 2004 and 44.3 percent in 2000. This year, Camarota expects 52 percent of eligible Latinos to vote.
Anything higher than that, he said, would indicate that “Hispanics were more animated to vote” and reiterated that he expects a “modest” increase in the percent of Latino voters and their share among the total electorate.
Jorge Plasencia, chairman of the NCLR board of directors, said the organization is working to increase that percentage by motivating Latinos to vote regardless of their party affiliation.
“If we don’t vote it sends the message that we’re disengaged and that we’re not engaged in the issues,” he said. “Our vote is our voice and our vote is our power. It doesn’t matter if you’re a Democrat, a Republican or an Independent. What Latinos should be doing right now is studying the candidates and really understanding which candidate is the right candidate to lead this country.”
Ron Melancon, who’s on the board of directors of the East Coast Migrant Headstart Project, warned that it is possible for “bad things to happen” if Latinos don’t vote.
“We want to keep in mind that it is possible for people who are anti-immigration, anti-people of color, anti-everything that we stand for, it’s possible for those people to win if we don’t turn out to vote,” he said. “And if they win, they’ll be stronger they’ll keep fighting, they’ll keep obstructing and they’ll keep electing people who share their views.”
This article was first published in Voxxi.
Griselda Nevárez is a reporter with Hispanic Link News Service in Washington D.C.
[Photo by DavidDubov]