According to the Hour, local officials are looking for Hispanic voters. Who knew they were missing?
Democratic Town Committee Chairman Galen Wells said language barriers and lack of information have prevented her party from efficiently reaching out to the Hispanic community.
“The thing that I want to figure out is, we have a lot of volunteers now who speak really good Spanish and say they want to volunteer in the Hispanic community, but at this point I don’t think we have a good way to find the Hispanic voters other than thumbing through the registry and finding Hispanic surnames,” she said.
Really? The best way to find hispanic voters is to “thumb through” a voter list and look for hispanic sounding surnames? That sounds so Jim Crow era. Hispanic people are of course part of the daily fabric of life in Norwalk. They run stores, own businesses, send their children to school, shop at grocery stores, buy houses, walk in the parks, and pretty much do everything every Norwalker does. Amazingly hispanic voters in Norwalk even read this site, the Hour, the Advocate, watch the news and listen to the local radio stations. Some even read the La Voz either online or in print.
For Romano, a candidate for Town Clerk, it fueled her decision to put information on her campaign site in Spanish.
“(The Hispanic community) is a large part and a very influential part of Norwalk,” she said. “You can’t sit back and expect them to vote if you don’t reach out to them.”
Ramirez said he is hopeful that the Hispanic community will turn out to vote this November.
“The Latino vote has a very serious impact even throughout the nation,” he said, adding that it is time for the community to become more politically aware. “There is no doubt in my mind that we really need to be more pro-active.”
Sometimes what you are looking for is right in front of you.
source:Hispanic vote gaining clout, by Amanda Pinto, September 21, 2007
