MILWAUKEE — Despite their best efforts, Republicans were not able to steal a State Supreme Court election here on April 7. That’s all the more reason Democrats should double down on this crucial battleground state if they want to win in November.
Both parties see the state as a must-win, part of the “blue wall,” along with Michigan and Pennsylvania, that proved decisive for Donald Trump’s surprise victory in 2016, winning the state by less than 23,000 votes.
But Mr. Trump wasn’t victorious here because of a surge in Republican votes. Rather, black, Latino and young voters did not turn out as fully as they could have. Mr. Trump had roughly the same number of votes as Mitt Romney did in 2012, but Hillary Clinton fell short of Barack Obama’s 2012 numbers by a staggering 230,000 votes.
If Democrats are serious about winning, they will need to engage people of color. Specifically, the 183,000 Latinos voters, the youngest and fastest growing of all ethnic groups here. With the margins of victory at 1 percent or less, even a small increase in turnout could tip the election. Latinos represent a powerful voting bloc that cannot be taken for granted.
We need the Democrats to run a new kind of campaign this year. Not just one that aggressively adapts to social distancing. But a campaign fueled by a different theory. For years, including in 2016, Democrats have relied heavily on expensive TV ads and traditional canvassing where paid staff members from out-of-state use out-of-date voter lists to contact people they don’t know and will never see again. This year, paid canvassers will likely shift to texting and phone calls.
But this stranger-to-stranger approach won’t work for many Latinos who don’t appear on the voter rolls because they move often or vote infrequently. Or for those of us who would never open a door to a stranger who might turn out to be an agent from Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
My organization tried a different approach in 2018, one that works in the coronavirus era and gets better results. It’s based on leveraging relationships among people who already know one another, which data shows increases voter turnout more than any other single outreach method, including mail, TV and digital advertisements, and twice as much as contact from a stranger.
Just six weeks before the midterm elections, we met with 410 of our members throughout the state and asked them to look through their phones and Facebook profiles to help us identify 5,600 eligible voters. Nearly seven in 10 of them were so-called ‘low propensity’ voters who would have been ignored by traditional campaigns. So our members, known as voceros, kept in touch with them, making sure they registered and voted.
Giselle Vera, 18, recruited more than a dozen of her friends at her Catholic school who cast their first-ever ballots. They did this in honor of her uncle who had been arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement for a minor driving infraction about six weeks before Election Day. He was one of dozens of people picked up in the largest raid in the state in decades. Because it was so close to a major election, however, many Latinos believe the raid was meant to intimidate mixed-status immigrant families. Thankfully, he was reunited with his family after receiving asylum.
And this new strategy worked. There was a 33 percent increase in Latino turnout in 2018 compared to the previous midterm election. In the district with the most Latinos, that figure increased by 40 percent, beating even the 2016 presidential election. This critical voting bloc helped replace Scott Walker with his Democratic challenger Tony Evers, and ushered in a slew of other pro-immigrant candidates, including the lieutenant governor, attorney general and state treasurer.
It wasn’t just Wisconsin where this friends-leveraging-friends approach saw astonishing results. Latinos in a similar experiment in Florida that year voted at a rate 11 percentage points higher than Latinos statewide. There was a 940 percent increase in early voting for a friends-to-friends cohort in Nevada compared to 2014. A randomized test showed such voters had higher turnout in Michigan than those reached by a traditional campaign and a control group.
This year, the coronavirus has made things far more challenging. Latinos usually rely on same-day voter registration, so we need widespread public education about how to register and ask for a mail-in ballot — simple graphics that show the steps in English and Spanish, if not more languages.
Older voters may not be comfortable with the technology needed. Families from low-income areas might not have access to Wi-Fi, smartphones or computers. So Latino organizers will have to call voters and walk them through these steps. Then follow up and ask if they got the absentee ballots. Then make sure they mailed them in.
At least 19 coronavirus infections are seemingly linked to in-person voting in April. So the state should make this even easier: Enact automatic voter registration and mail a ballot with prepaid return postage to all registered voters at least 30 days before the November election. No one should have to obtain a signature from a witness or provide a photo ID to request or return their ballot. And on Election Day, the state must allow voters to return ballots through the mail, at secure drop boxes or at polling locations.
To motivate Latinos, the Democratic Party should build on what has proved successful and invest in groups that prioritize person-to-person organizing, not just throw all their money at TV ads. The Biden campaign must make clear that enacting immigration reform, including a pathway to citizenship for the 11 million undocumented workers, is a top priority immediately after taking office. We also need universal health care and a robust economic aid package that includes everyone, regardless of immigration status.
Wisconsin voters shattered absentee voting records earlier this month, while heroic citizens braved the pandemic to have their say in the future of their government. Over the next six months, my organization plans to mobilize 1,700 Latinos to build a network of 23,000 voters, the president’s margin of victory. Our state went for every Democratic candidate from 1988 to 2012. With Latinos at the vanguard we can reclaim that legacy and defeat Donald Trump.
Christine Neumann-Ortiz is the founder and executive director of Voces de la Frontera Action.
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Source: Elections - nytimes.com
