Reports about immigration get a disproportionate amount of attention in Latino media and in the mainstream media’s attempts to cover the Latino community – and deservedly so. Immigration is one of the most important stories of our time, but it’s not the only one. When you consider that 63 percent of Latinos in the country are U.S. born, other story lines vie for attention.
For instance, there are 25 million LVAP’s. If you don’t know what LVAP is, you’re proving my point. LVAP is an acronym for Latino Voting Age Population. Think of it as raw political potential. It’s the number of Latinos in the U.S. who are citizens of voting age.
Now, compare that potential with present reality: only 8 percent of the LVAP votes.
If the number of LVAP that actually voted were higher, immigration might not be such a pressing issue – we could have more elected representatives in congress that favored comprehensive immigration reform. This is nothing new. I bring it up not so much for the sake of immigration, but for the sake of voting, to be specific, for the sake of voting rights.
Voting rights may well be one of the most important civil rights issues of our time, but it gets little play in the media. We hear about it when the Supreme Court renders the occasional voting rights decision, but this story is playing out regularly at the local level.
Here are two stories that merit attention in the Latino community because they deal with voting power dilution and voter suppression at a time when states are taking cues from …
These views reflect the opinion of Victor Landa, founder and editor of NewsTaco.
To read full article: http://www.newstaco.com/2014/05/12/six-months-from-midterms-latinos-should-pay-more-attention-to-voting-voting-rights/