A coalition of Latino organizations has launched an educational campaign today to mobilize this community to register to vote and participate in the upcoming primaries on June 27 in which the Council (state legislature), county attorneys and some judges will be elected.
Latino Action Week began today with various events in The Bronx, where there is a 54.8% Latino population and was one of the counties with the lowest turnout in the 2022 primaries and elections, and will later expand to the rest of the counties in areas of high Hispanic concentration.
In the Democratic primaries of June and August of last year, when they voted to elect the candidates for Congress and the federal Senate, governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general and for the State Assembly and Senate, participation in the Bronx was only 10.5% and 9.1% and in the November elections it rose only to 27.9%, as reported by the coalition today.
This situation was attributed to the number of elections that took place last year, the distance from the voting centers and also to the fact that electoral participation was not a priority for Hispanics, the ethnic group most affected by the covid, a health crisis that It led them to lose family members, jobs and their homes.
Emely Páez, from the Hispanic Federation, pointed out during the press conference that during this initiative, Latino voters will be informed about the deadline to register to vote, June 17, when early voting also begins until the 25th, and that the 26th of this month is the deadline to request the absentee ballot.
“We want to ensure that Latinos participate in the electoral process,” said Eddie Cuesta, executive director of Dominicanos USA, who recalled that these elections are carried out as a result of electoral redistribution, which is done after each census and that led to changes in electoral districts.
The lawyer Fulvia Vargas, from Latino Justice, warned that “we are at a crucial moment” to go to the polls because laws are emerging in the country to suppress the vote, which mainly affects blacks and Latinos.
“We cannot let them continue to see us as a minority group because we are almost 30% of the population in this city” and 14% of all citizens with the capacity to vote in the US, he said.
In Brooklyn, Latinos are 18.9% of the population, 27.8% in Queens and 23.8% in Manhattan. “We have the power, we have the numbers, get out there and vote,” said Orlando Ovalles, director of civic engagement for the Northeast US for the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO).
2023-06-12 19:35:00
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