Linda Rios, 20, a canvasser for Mi Familia Vota, a non-partisan civic organization, tries to get eligible voters registered outside of a grocery store in Las Vegas on Tuesday, July 31, 2012.
Wednesday, July 15, 2020 | 2 a.m.
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The advocacy organization Mi Familia Vota offered a bright bit of good news recently when it announced a $10 million campaign to activate Latino voters in Nevada and several battleground states. That’s worth three cheers, because a more fully mobilized Latino voter population will mean great things for the nation and for our state.
Mi Familia Vota, based in Phoenix, has a strong presence in Southern Nevada and has done outstanding work in previous elections to register voters and encourage them to cast their ballots. Good turnout among Latino voters in 2018 helped deal a solid defeat to Trump-era extremism in our state and instead sent a number of reasonable, bipartisan-focused candidates into office. As a result, we made strides toward greater equality, coming away with a diverse array of leaders who better reflect the rich ethnic makeup of our region, and with female majorities in the Supreme Court and in both chambers of the state Legislature.
This year, Mi Familia Vota is pushing the pedal to the floor. Its stepped-up campaign involves a blitz of text messages, phone calls, TV advertising and social media ads to reach voters in Nevada, Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Texas and Wisconsin.
In Nevada, the campaign is strategically important in the effort to keep GOP extremism at bay. Although Republicans got demolished in the 2016 and 2018 elections here, President Donald Trump’s election campaign claims to believe it can turn the tide here in November, and will invest in taking Nevada. Party strategists believe the powerful Culinary Union, another organization that has done a stellar job of mobilizing minority voters, will have less influence on this year’s voting. With many of the union’s members sidelined by coronavirus-related staffing cutbacks on the Strip, GOP strategists believe the Culinary will have a harder time reaching those voters and motivating them to vote.
That’s where Mi Familia Vota’s campaign will be helpful. The organization’s goal is to increase Latino voting in its targeted states by 3.3 million over 2016.
No question, Latino voters could make a significant difference in this year’s state-level and national elections. The Pew Research Center projects that 32 million Latino voters will be eligible to vote this fall, making them the largest minority group of eligible voters. Blacks are the second-largest community of eligible voters, at about 30 million. Latinos now make up a record-high 13.3% of all eligible voters, Pew reports.
In Nevada, about 415,000 of the state’s nearly 1.9 million eligible voters are Latino — about 24% of the total.
Mi Familia Vota is encouraging voters to oppose Trump, and with good reason considering that Latinos and other minority communities have been badly hurt by the administration’s policies on the economy, the environment, immigration and more. In addition, Trump’s inept handling of the pandemic has disproportionately affected Latino communities, where infection rates have climbed rapidly in recent months to levels above other minorities.
But regardless, the Mi Familia Vota campaign is commendable simply because it encourages Latino voters to engage in the democratic process and ensure that their interests are reflected at the ballot box. Democracy thrives when there’s vigorous participation among people from every ethnic community and socioeconomic level.
The effort is also important at a time of voter suppression efforts by Trump and the GOP — limiting polling places, discouraging mail-in balloting, etc.
In Nevada, we’ve already seen the terrific things that come when Latino voters are empowered and encouraged to come to the polls. The Mi Familia Vota campaign promises to keep that participation going strong and give Latino voters a louder voice in other states as well.
