Latinos in the voting spirit on National Voter Registration Day
National Voter Registration Day falls on every third Tuesday of September, and today marks the second annual one-day effort to register voters and get them involved in the American political process. Approximately 800 organizations have planned more than 650 events nationwide in order to register Americans to vote in time for Election Day 2013.
According to the non-partisan organization Voto Latino, six million Americans did not vote in 2008 because they missed a registration deadline or didn’t know how to register. National Voter Registration Day was founded last year in order to stop that from happening again. Currently, the cause has more than 1,000 partners nationwide.
“Every month, more than 65,000 American Latinos turn 18-years-old. That is a power in the Latino vote that’s ready to be tapped, and this is why National Voter Registration Day is so important,” says Jimmy A. Hernandez, Communications Director of Voto Latino. “Today, the families of 11 million undocumented immigrants are waiting on Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform. When Latinos are registered and voting, we have a political muscle that no one can ignore, especially the House of Representatives, which so far has refused to act on immigration reform.”
National Voter Registration Day wasn’t started by any one group, says Hernandez, but by a coalition of organizations who wanted to create a day to raise awareness of the importance of voting — similar to what Earth Day does for the environmental movement.
A national Twitter rally will be held at 2:00 p.m. EST using #CelebrateNVRD, and the same hashtag will be used on all social media platforms to create awareness for National Voter Registration Day.