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The Latino Vote: A Long-Term Project

Much has been made of the immigrant vote this year, and whether immigrant rights activists could turn the amazing wave of Latino activism we saw in this spring's marches into victories at the polls. Another story today, this time in the San Jose Mercury News,, makes the common mistake of putting an absolute judgment on these efforts far too quickly. As the story later points out, there is little more difficult and time-consuming than the person-to-person work of getting people who are not currently involved in politics to register and vote.

"It's not like some made-for-TV movie where someone knocks on the door, and all of a sudden everyone is cheering and listening to them," said Jaime Alvarado, executive director of the Mayfair Initiative Project, which led volunteer voter registration drives in 11 East San Jose precincts for the first time this fall. "This is hard work."

One of the biggest problems is raising money to fund this work, particularly when the efforts are explicitly political in nature. PowerPAC has been working on solutions to this part of the problem this cycle, and we will step up our efforts after Tuesday. Meanwhile other groups, such as the Color of Democracy Fund and California VoterConnect, are working on solutions that will strengthen the grassroots groups on the ground reaching these populations.

This task is large and daunting, and its success cannot and should not be measured in one election cycle.

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