People attend the 2024 Latino Loud nonpartisan voter registration, engagement and education campaign at Chicanos Por La Causa Nevada Thursday, May 2, 2024. The campaign supported by both Chicanos Por La Causa Nevada and Chicanos Por La Causa Sí Se Vota Action Fund.
Friday, May 3, 2024 | 2 a.m.
Latino voters could change the tide of this year’s elections as a growing wave becomes eligible to vote, and local organizations are joining together to ensure that all of Nevada’s Latino voters — from the new 18-year-old to the grandfather who hasn’t cast a ballot in years — show up to the polls this November.
“We believe if Latino votes are at the table where decisions are being made, then Latino issues will be addressed because the Latino voice will be heard,” Joe Garcia, executive director of Sí Se Vota Chicanos Por La Causa Action Fund, said at a Thursday morning news conference. “Every vote counts, especially over a lifetime and, effectively, over future generations, if we help create a voter for life.”
Chicanos Por La Causa Nevada, a nonprofit advocacy organization for Latinos, and its branch organization Sí Se Vota Chicanos Por La Causa Action Fund will be working with local partners to launch their Latino Loud campaign. The effort will target new and “low propensity” voters that haven’t participated in recent elections, Garcia said.
Social and traditional media will be a big part in spreading the Latino Loud message, but Garcia explained that they also plan on registering people to vote online, at community events and in their office at 555 N. Maryland Parkway.
This year is the first that Latino Loud has been in Nevada, said Rudy Zamora, advocacy director of Chicanos Por La Causa Nevada. It originally began in neighboring Arizona two years ago, and Zamora said they decided to expand it into Southern Nevada ahead of the upcoming election in a bid to get more Latino voters to the polls.
Increasing the participation of low-propensity voters from 0.8% to 1.6% is the goal, according to Chicanos Por La Causa.
The past two national elections have seen historic turnouts of Latino voters, and those numbers are expected to grow even more, according to the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO), a nonpartisan organization of Latino elected and appointed officials.
Latino voters are most concerned with the economy, immigration, housing affordability, health care and foreign relations, NALEO research showed. Leo Murrieta — director of Make the Road Nevada, one of the Latino Loud partner groups — pointed out that high costs of rent, groceries and gasoline bolstered by “corporate greed” have become major concerns for Latinos across Nevada.
“Latinos, they don’t just care about immigration; it’s the issues that CPLC organizes on,” Murrieta said Thursday. “Our existence is politics … (and) our future depends on us coming together and striving for better, demanding more and advocating for a better and more just tomorrow.”
In the past two decades, the Latino voting base nationally has steadily increased from 5.9 million in 2000 to 16.5 million in 2020, with an especially dramatic jump between 2016 and 2020, Arturo Vargas, the CEO of the NALEO Educational Fund, said at a February press briefing. About 88% of Latinos who registered to vote took to the polls, he added.
NALEO projects — based on previous data — that 17.5 million Latinos nationally will vote this November, with a 15.5% increase of Latino voters in Nevada. Many factors contribute to the high projection, said Vargas, but the biggest factor is growth of the Latino electorate itself.
Latino U.S. citizens 18 years of age or older make up one of the largest voting blocs in the U.S., second only to non-Hispanic whites, Vargas explained at the February press event.
In Nevada, roughly 30% of the state’s estimated 3.1 millionresidents identify as Hispanic or Latino, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. In the 2020 election, according to the Americas Society / Council of the Americas, Latinos comprised 20% of Nevada’s total voter turnout.
Nearly 400,000 Latinos are eligible to vote in Nevada, which makes up roughly 22% of the Silver State’s electorate, according to officials at Chicanos Por La Causa.
“Too many members of our community are eligible to vote, but do not exercise their voice,” Alicia Nunez, president and CEO of Chicanos Por La Causa, said at Thursday’s news conference. “We must be heard on important ballot measures as to what kind of state do we want for ourselves, our parents, our children and our grandchildren and future generations.”
Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar also attended Thursday’s event to speak about Chicanos Por La Causa and the importance of increasing voter turnout, especially within the Latino community.
Approximately 1 in 5 voters in Nevada are Latino, but only 50% of the population turns out for elections, Aguilar said. The state secretary, who was born in Tucson, Ariz., and said Chicanos Por La Causa “was a part of (his) family,” was excited to bring the organization’s efforts to Nevada.
Growing up, Aguilar watched Chicanos Por La Causa members raise their voices about various issues in the city. He also served on the Chicanos Por La Causa Tucson advisory board, then its Phoenix board before moving to Las Vegas, he said.
Aguilar added that teaching students in the Clark County School District – comprising over 50% Latinos – the value of civic engagement could help with “achieving the priorities of our community” and getting parents to vote can create “a different investment in public education.”
Latino Loud is a nonpartisan campaign, officials emphasized.
“I don’t care who people vote for, I care that people vote, because when they vote, things will happen and we no longer have to sit back and talk about what we wish would happen; we will see it happen, we will be part of the movement,” Aguilar said. “So let’s get engaged, let’s vote and let’s be excited.”
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