According to the AZ Republic, more Latinos in AZ will vote this year, than ever before.
In response to the hostility from AZ politicians and their policies, 10 groups have gone door to door to register more Latinos/as and put more voters on the rolls than 2008.
Francisco Heredia, Arizona director of Mi Familia Vota, a national group, said his organization has registered 7,500 new Latino voters in Arizona and has signed up 20,000 Latino voters for the permanent early-voter list, ensuring they will receive a ballot in the mail for every election.
Registered voters who receive ballots in the mail are more likely to vote, he said.
Promise AZ registered 34,000 new Latino/a voters.
Those numbers put AZ on track to increase voter participation by Latinos by 40%.
Arturo Vargas, executive director of NALEO, said the organization is projecting a large increase in the number of Latino voters for several reasons.
The number of Latinos eligible to vote in Arizona is increasing rapidly, primarily because of the number of Latinos turning 18.
“That population is actually growing faster than the population that votes in every election,” Vargas said.
Based on an analysis of voter rolls, there are 576,000 Latinos registered to vote in Arizona this year, up 40 percent from 410,000 Latino registered voters in 2008, according to NALEO.
Additionally, a mistake by the Maricopa County Recorder's Office, that printed the wrong election date on Spanish materials, has given the groups more energy, and they have upped their GOTV efforts.
The voter-registration efforts intensified over the two weeks, after it was revealed that the county printed the wrong election date on some election materials in Spanish, including bookmarks distributed at voter-outreach events and election reminders distributed with voter-ID cards.
The Spanish version of the materials gave Nov. 8 as the election date instead of the correct date, Nov. 6.
The errors sparked an outcry from Latino voting groups concerned that the wrong election dates printed in Spanish could prevent some Latinos from voting, undermining some of their efforts to boost Latino turnout at the polls.
NALEO projects that 359,000 Latinos will vote in Arizona on Tuesday. That would be a 23 percent increase from the 291,000 Latinos who voted in the 2008 general election.
So although, AZ may not go blue this election cycle, we're on the way. And if all those extra voters in Maricopa County throw out the evil Joe Arpaio, I'll consider it a major breakthrough in Arizona's march from darkness.
Let's all do our part to GOTV.