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Alliance says it’s registered half-million immmigrant voters
Voter mobilization groups from across the country said Monday they had attained their collective goal to register 500,000 new immigrant voters in time for the presidential election and would shift their efforts to turning out 1 million immigrant voters in battleground states.
“We’re reaching the next phase of this amazing journey we began in 2006 together,” said Rudy Lopez, deputy director for politics with the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Community Change. The center is one of the 14 partners in the We Are America Alliance, which sprang from the 2006 nationwide protests in support of comprehensive immigration reform. An estimated 4 million people took to the streets in demonstrations across the country.
The alliance says it is spending $10 million in its coordinated registration and voter mobilization effort, which it describes as unprecedented in Latino, Asian and immigrant communities.
Some political analysts believe the efforts could impact outcomes in hotly contested states with growing immigrant and Latino populations. Hispanic voters, in particular, could tip the election in states like Florida, Nevada, Colorado and New Mexico, where Latinos make up significant shares of voters. Those four states, which account for 46 of the 270 electoral votes needed to elect a president, went for President Bush by a total of about 500,000 votes in 2004.
In a conference call with reporters, Maria Rodriguez, executive director of the Florida Immigrant Coalition, said voter registration in that state has increased by 8 percent since 2006, but registration among Latino voters there rose by 21 percent.
Rodriguez attributed the surge to immigrant voters’ desire for immigration reforms giving unauthorized immigrants opportunities to become legal U.S. residents. Both Senators Barack Obama and John McCain support such a framework, though the Republican Party platform does not.
Rodriguez noted that the rally cry of marchers during the 2006 immigration protests was “Today we march, tomorrow we vote.”
“Well, today is tomorrow,” Rodriguez said.
