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Guest Blogger: Arturo Vargas of NALEO
By Alejandra Owens, November 4, 2008 03:57 PM
One more guest blogger for you today. This time, Arturo Vargas from National Association of Latino Elected Officials (or NALEO) joins us in talking about the much sought after Latino vote...
Today, the Latino community has a historic opportunity to play a decisive role in the outcome of the presidential election. In order to meet the needs of the country's Latino voters, the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO) Educational Fund has been engaged in an unprecedented voter engagement campaign that is changing the face of the American Electorate by increasing Latino voter participation.
Nationally, there are 17 million Latinos eligible to register and participate in the nation's electoral process, of which 30 percent are over the age of 50. We anticipate that today Latinos will play a critical role in writing the next chapter of the American story.
Over the past few weeks, the NALEO Educational Fund and its national and local partners, including Mi Familia Vota and the National Council of La Raza, have been making live phone calls to voters in eight states, including Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Nevada, New Mexico, New York and Texas. In all, live phone canvassers reached out to more than 160,000 thousand young, newly registered, and infrequent Latino voters.
Today, all of the organization's resources are focused on our 1-888-Ve-y-Vota hotline, the largest live-operator bilingual hotline. It is serving as the voter information hotline for the ya es hora campaign and the official Spanish-language hotline for the national Election Protection Coalition. We will be taking calls all day helping voters find their polling places and taking reports on voter protection issues.
Arturo Vargas
Executive Director
NALEO