The Push For 10,000 Latino Voters At The Iowa Caucuses

[Stuckinthebush]

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-push-for-10000-latino-voters-at-the-iowa-caucuses/

Good news for Clinton

DES MOINES, Iowa — On Saturday at noon, several dozen Latino voters will fill the Mary J. Treglia Community House in Sioux City for a mock caucus ahead of Monday’s statewide vote. They will be greeted by a registration table, representatives from the Jeb Bush, Hillary Clinton, Martin O’Malley and Bernie Sanders campaigns, and 33-year-old Christian Ucles, the political director of the Iowa chapter of the League of United Latin American Citizens, or LULAC, a national Latino anti-discrimination organization.

The event will be one of dozens that LULAC Iowa has held throughout the state in recent months as part of its campaign to mobilize at least 10,000 Latino voters to participate in the caucuses on Feb. 1.

Historically, political campaigns haven’t reached out to Latinos, which is one of the reasons Latinos haven’t shown up to cast ballots. And as campaigns have become more data-driven, they’ve increasingly relied on tapping the well of people with prior voting history, further excluding Latino voters. Although campaigns have been focusing more on Latinos nationally, especially in the wake of their turnout for President Obama in the 2008 and 2012 elections, Latino outreach in Iowa still lags.

Ucles said that as a result, many Latinos in the state don’t know what it means to be politically active, or where to start to become more engaged. LULAC hopes its campaign will educate these prospective voters as well as draw attention to the need for Latino engagement both from the public at large and from the presidential campaigns.

[Cha]

1. I'm so glad this is happening... thank you, Sitb

[SunSeeker]

2. K & R

[BlueCaliDem]

3. EXCELLENT! Voting in the United States isn't a simple thing. It's darn difficult if you don't know

how to navigate the pitfalls that Republicans have systematically put in voters' path to the voting booths.

California has gone a long way in order to make it easier, just like having to do jury duty - they get their info from people who are registered to vote and send you those stupid but daunting jury cards with the warning that you'll be penalized if you ignore it.

Doing jury duty is difficult for a lot of people because it takes them away from work and hard dollars to sit in on cases for $15 bucks a day with $0.34 cents per mile driven compensation. If you just make minimum wage and have to live off of it, that's gonna hurt big time.

So they should do the same for voting: send a card that they have to call in and 'register' that they've received the card, and that they must vote in whatever election is coming up.

But no. They go all out for jury duty - that takes money out of your pocket - but they go completely silent on your civic duty to vote for the gov't you want. And that is, in my opinion, far more important with regard to exercising and honoring our civic duties as American citizens than stupid jury duty.