Kamala Harris candidacy boosts Latino voter registration, especially women and youths

The boost to the Democratic campaign triggered by President Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw from the race and make way for his vice president, Kamala Harris, has not only been reflected in the polls. The organization Voto Latino, which works to promote voting among Hispanics, has increased voter registration by 200% since Harris took over from Biden as the Democratic presidential nominee. The announcement comes on the day that is celebrated as National Voter Registration Day.

As of today, Voto Latino claims to have registered 112,000 new voters. The majority of those registered, 56%, are young people between the ages of 18 and 29, and three-fifths are between 18 and 39 years old. The states where there has been the most registration activity are Texas, Georgia, Arizona, North Carolina and Florida. In addition to young people, women have been the main drivers of the registration movement.

“This enthusiasm that we are seeing emerged on July 21, when President Biden decided to step aside and nominate and endorse Vice President Kamala Harris,” said Ameer Patel, program director for Voto Latino.

Pattel explains that the month of July started with 39,000 new registrations, but between July 21 and 31 alone, there were 50,000 new registrations, of which 70% are women. To compare the figures, in July 2016, when Hillary Clinton was nominated, there were 2,252 new registered voters, and in 2020, after Joe Biden was nominated, there were 25,116.

The organization focused on reaching younger voters using digital media, which is widely used by this population group. “We started targeting young people immediately after the announcement,” explains Patel.

Voto Latino, which has publicly supported the Democratic candidate, compares the numbers with those achieved during Barack Obama’s campaigns. Despite the enthusiasm that Harris’ nomination injected into the Democratic campaign at the beginning, most Latino voters acknowledged that they knew nothing about her program. According to Maria Teresa Kumar, president of Voto Latino, this began to change after Harris spoke about her proposals, such as providing affordable housing. “At first, when we saw the enthusiasm, it was like ‘we like her, she’s very authentic,’ but now they are starting to see how she really is and they like her even more,” says Kumar.

According to their surveys, the issues that interest young Latinas the most are the economy and reproductive rights. Security and gun control are in third place.

Latinos are the demographic group that has grown the most since the last election, and with 36.2 million voters they represent 14% of all citizens eligible to vote in the country. Since 2020, four million new voters have joined the ranks: every 30 seconds a Latino turns 18, the age required to vote. However, and despite the progress made in recent weeks, there are only 26 million Latinos registered to vote and only 16 million voted in the last election. Their vote is decisive in some key states such as Arizona, where they reach 25% of voters, and Nevada, where they are 22%, which will end up deciding the outcome of the presidential election.

Kumar points to misinformation as one of the factors that most hinders Latino participation at the polls. “And the fact that Republicans spent a week talking about deportations gave Latinos pause.”

Voting advocacy organizations recognize that there is still a long way to go for Latinos to reach the level of participation of the rest of the population. Theirs is the group that has shown the most apathy, based on the idea that none of the candidates reflected their needs. The fact that they do not feel represented, the lack of information on how to register and the reluctance to provide personal data that could potentially harm them at some point have been the main reasons for not doing so. In the 2020 elections, only 61% of eligible Latinos registered to vote, compared to 74% of non-Hispanic white citizens.

Obstacles to participation

In addition to the lack of interest that Latinos may have in the elections, there are also difficulties that they encounter in some states, which are more reluctant to let immigrants vote, even if they are citizens. One example is the identification that must be presented at the time of registration, which in 21 states, including the key states of Georgia and North Carolina, must have a photo. The most common form of identification is a driver’s license, but not everyone has one. Another option is a passport, but the process is not cheap and many do not have one either.

Kumar criticizes attempts by some Republican states to suppress voting with tactics such as Texas’s disallowing voters from having temporary addresses, which he says refers to student residences. “We know there is an effort to purge records, not just by state authorities but by local organizations as well, and part of our effort is to contact voters when that happens before Election Day and make sure they are registered even if they haven’t voted in the past two elections,” a task he says they were not prepared to take on.

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