Latinos make up an estimated 8 percent of the 1.8 million people living in Nebraska, and only about half of them are U.S. citizens of voting age, but that number is likely to rise, researchers contend in a report released Thursday.
Nebraska will have more voting-eligible Latinos in the coming years as U.S.-born Latino children reach adulthood and through naturalization, researchers at the University of Nebraska at Omaha's Office of Latino/Latin American Studies of the Great Plains say in their report.
"Latinos are becoming naturalized citizens at increasingly high rates and their children are overwhelmingly US-born," the researchers say.
The office compiled the data using estimates from the 2010 U.S. Census Bureau and data from the Census Bureau's 2205 Citizen Voting Age Population tabulation and 2009 American Community Survey.
The UNO report found that while the overall number of voting-eligible Latinos is relatively small, they represent a sizeable portion of certain legislative districts, including a district in south Omaha where about 40 percent of the 27,500 people of voting age are Latino, the researchers say.
The 2010 Census shows the number of Latinos in Nebraska surged more than 77 percent over the past 10 years.
The report comes as the Nebraska Legislature begins the process of redistricting _ redrawing the boundaries of the state's federal, state and local political districts to equalize the population of those districts in accordance with U.S. Census results.
"These are important decisions where party politics often play a significant role and where minority populations' impact on future elections could be diluted if their numbers are seriously split across district boundaries," said Lourdes Gouveia, the director of the university department and co-author of the report.
A resolution being considered by the Legislature's Redistricting Committee calls for lawmakers to avoid diluting the voting strength of any minority population, among other things.
The UNO report includes only estimates of Latinos who are eligible to vote; it does not suggest how many Latinos are registered to vote.
The 2010 U.S. Census did not ask residents about their citizenship, and election officials have no way of knowing how many Latino voters are in the state, said Douglas County Election Commissioner Dave Phipps, whose district includes the state's largest city of Omaha.
"We don't keep any sort of record of that. People who register to vote aren't asked to check a box regarding their ethnicity," Phipps said.