LatinaLista — The Latino vote is proving to be a challenge for not just politicians coveting the votes of Latinos but for Latino communities counting on those votes as a show of voter strength and influence.
As noted in a previous post, registering Latinos to vote is only half the battle and so far has proven to be ineffective when it came to getting Latinos to actually show up at the polls.
There’s probably no area of the country where Latino voter apathy is strongest than in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley. Analysts say that in the predominantly Latino region of the Lone Star State, only 2 out of 10 voters actually vote. This apathy has caused some to create new strategies to motivate Latino voters to do their civic duty.
The latest creative approach to remind voters is a new mobile app being released in August by the Advocacy Alliance Center of Texas. Dubbed “Voter Lookup,” the app delivers a variety of much-needed information to voters:
1. If they are registered to vote.
2. How to register to vote.
3. Which precinct they are in.
4. The nearest voting locations.
5. Where to go to vote on election day.
Of course, the bottom line is that each Latino voter uses the information from the virtual app to physically go to the polls and vote for their choice of candidate — and, unfortunately, there’s no app that can do that yet.
