Don’t Count Out the Latina Vote

This year, scores of young Latinos will be eligible to vote for the first time in North Carolina. They’ve joined the ranks of more than 300,000 others in the state, who have historically been neglected by the major parties and get-out-the-vote efforts.

But activists see a change coming, and they’re counting on women to make it happen. Arianna Genis and Cris Batista are two organizers with Mijente, a national progressive-activist network, who moved to North Carolina in the past year to help fill the outreach gap. Their 30-person team, which is overwhelmingly Latina, is one strand in a web of Latina organizers who have spent years trying to empower mothers, aunts, daughters, and cousins around the country to see themselves as influential political actors—who not only vote themselves, but compel their communities to turn out too. Latinas could very well become a dominant force in American elections to come, but they have to be convinced of their own power first.

Voting “follows