Mi Familia Vota campaigning for Hispanic voters

SAN LUIS, Ariz. – Mi Familia Vota, or My Family Votes, wants to make sure Hispanics make their presence felt at the polls in this year's election.

The voter registration program has a goal of adding about 94,000 voters of Latino roots to the rolls in Yuma County and around the state in time for the November general election.

Juan Manuel Guerrero, recently appointed coordinator of Mi Familia Vota for Yuma County, said the voter registration campaign aimed at Hispanics will be unprecedented this year, owing to the fact that both Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain have said the Hispanic vote will be decisive in their presidential aspirations.

Guerrero, a member of Alianza de Liderazgo Comunitario, or Alliance of Community Leadership, said now it's up to Hispanics themselves to have a role in the election by registering to vote and then actually voting.

Mi Familia Vota will base its Yuma County operations in Somerton starting in August, he said

"Somerton is ideal because it's half way between San Luis and Yuma, and that's where we will focus."

Guerrero and Cesar Duarte, statewide director for Mi Familia Vota, said the campaign is nonpartisan and that its objective is to get the highest number of voter registrations and the highest Hispanic turnout at the polls.

Yuma-area community groups such as the Alliance of Community Leadership have already been conducting citizenship clinics and voter registration campaigns of their own among Hispanics, Guerrero said, and Mi Familia Vota will trying to dovetail with those efforts.

"If we call ourselves leaders, now it the time to prove it," he said. "This is a unique opportunity to assert this recognition being given to the Hispanic vote."

Duarte said the voter registration will begin in earnest Aug. 18 and will continue until the Oct. 6 deadline for new voters to register for the general election.

Mi Familia Vota, a nationwide program to involve Hispanics in the political process, started in Arizona in 2002.

"The fundamental job of the coordinators and organizers will be to motivate the community to participate as volunteers," Duarte said. "Several elections, including the presidential one, were decided by the absentee ballots and the Hispanic vote. There has come the time to claim the political power we have in the community."

---

Cesar Neyoy is a staff writer for Bajo El Sol, The Sun's Spanish-language sister publication from which this story is reprinted.