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LULAC Joins National Latino Advocacy and Civil Rights Groups for ¡Todos a Votar! Tour

July 24, 2012

Contact: Paloma Zuleta, pzuleta@lulac.org
(202) 812-4477 (M)
202-833-6130 ext.103 (O)

Washington, D.C. – National Latino advocacy groups including LULAC will embark this week on the ¡Todos a Votar! (“Let’s Vote”) Tour to register and mobilize Latino voters throughout the country.

The Latino voter engagement tour will kick off in Northern California on Wednesday, July 25 and continue to San Diego. From California, the voter registration campaign will go to the key Latino vote states of Nevada, Arizona, Florida, Colorado, and Texas.

Joining LULAC in the national campaign are the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Mi Familia Vota (MFV), the Center for Community Change (CCC), Labor Council for Latin American Advancement (LCLAA), Presente.org, Voto Latino, and the Hispanic Federation. The organizations will work with activists on the ground to register Latino voters, inform them of the issues at stake in this election, and help mobilize them to the polls.

The first event will be a Twitter Town Hall on Wednesday, July 25, at 5 pm Pacific, 8 pm Eastern. Advocacy leaders, including Latino youth leaders, will chat online about key issues such as voter protection. The hashtag is #voto12

On Thursday, starting at 10 AM PDT, the Diocese of Stockton will welcome the voter registration tour, a press conference will be held with community, faith, Latino advocacy and labor leaders, followed by precinct walk through Stockton in Comisión Honorifica Mexicana, “La Jamaica,” 609 South Lincoln Street. On Friday, starting at 11:30AM PDT, a news conference with community, faith, Latino advocacy and labor leaders will be followed by precinct walk in 134-136 West 168th St., Gardena, CA. On Friday, at 5 PM PDT a precinct walk, with open media availability, will be held 1525 Third St. #E, Riverside, CA.

Field and online activities will continue on Saturday. Also on Friday, LCLAA will contact 5,000 Latino houses as part of a vote canvassing operation in Orlando, FL. The rest of the national itinerary will be posted.

“The national picture shows that the Latino community is no longer sitting at the sidelines. Today, people of Hispanic origin make up this nation's largest ethnic minority, with fifty million strong,” said LULAC Executive Director Brent Wilkes. “In some key battleground states, the number of eligible but unregistered Latino voters runs into the hundreds of thousands or even millions—on top of these millions of potential voters, DHS estimates that there are 8.5 million legal permanent residents that are eligible to become citizens and vote in the fall election. LULAC’s work with voter registration drives is critical to mobilizing the 50.5 million Hispanics to register and vote.”

According to recent NALEO projections, over 12 million Latinos are expected to vote this presidential election. Latinos are also poised to determine the outcome of the national election for president in several battleground states, including Nevada, Colorado, and Florida. Both congressional and presidential candidates have made vast efforts to appeal to the growing Latino electorate.