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Editor’s note: This article by Bob Moore was originally published in the El Paso Times Nov. 5. It is reprinted here with permission of the El Paso Times. Women and younger voters who did not vote in 2012 fueled El Paso’s record-shattering early voting turnout. An El Paso Times analysis of county election records shows that the number of voters under age 30 doubled from 2012, to almost 20,000.
This year’s contentious presidential election will most surely be remembered as one that broke new ground on many fronts: first woman on the ballot, first business tycoon/political outsider to run for the oval office, first time hot button issues of immigration and free trade made it to the national debate stage. After election day we’ll also know whether the race for the White House has produced a long-awaited milestone regarding the national Latino vote, which many believe to be a sleeping giant that will soon wake up to vote in large enough numbers to affect the outcome of a presidential election. This remains to be seen. Read and watch border region election coverage by UTEP and NMSU student reporters and online news site New Mexico In Depth here. A question in the minds of many is whether Latinos will be motivated to cast ballots in greater numbers than before because of Republican Donald Trump’s anti immigrant rhetoric and hate speech against Mexicans, Latinos and others, and promises to stop illegal immigration by building a “beautiful wall” between the United States and Mexico. Mexico will have to pay for it, he has said.
EL PASO – Like millennials elsewhere, young El Pasoans are distinguished by their historic low levels of civic and electoral participation. But a group of local political leaders and others have spent the last year in an aggressive campaign inside high school classrooms and auditoriums to help sign up 18-year-olds and get them to cast a ballot November 8. Spearheaded by the office of State Sen. José Rodriguez, the Student Voter Initiative deployed volunteers to 26 high schools in nine school districts over the last 11 months to talk to about 7,000 teenagers about the political process, civic engagement and the importance of voting. As a result of the high school campaign, 650 El Paso area students age 18 years and older are now registered to vote, according to Samantha Romero, office coordinator for Sen. Rodriguez
Claudia Yoli, Director of Community Affairs for Sen. Rodriguez, said of the initiative: “We wanted to let students know that Texas overall has a very low voter participation rate and,in our community, it can go as low as 10 percent during non presidential elections, so we want students to know that and change it.”
Related: Latino voter registration lags other groups
Immigration debate boosts voter registration on U.S. border
According to VoteTexas.gov, during the 2012 presidential election, there were 383, 737 registered voters In El Paso, County, and out of those only 171,070, or 44.58 percent actually voted. At the national level, Pew Research Center data shows that as April 2016 an estimated 69.2 million millennials (people between the ages of 18 – 35) were voting age U.S. citizens.
SUNLAND PARK – A couple of miles from Texas and less than a mile from Mexico, Carlos Juarez is serving the lunch crowd at the family business, Carlos Bakery/Panaderia. Signs for local candidates adorn the main business sign and the windows. The 28-year-old sees a definite difference in the 2016 presidential election compared with four years ago. “There’s no enthusiasm anymore,” Juarez said. “2012, from the Obama campaign, we had people coming out once or twice a week.