A group of Latino community members gathered Thursday outside the Hal Marshall Annex early voting site at noon as part of an effort that kicked off this week to increase Latino voter turnout, displaying voter information and repeating “Latino, tu voto cuenta.”
The “Let's Vote Together” initiative, hosted by the Latino Civic Engagement Committee and led by Wendy Mateo-Pascual, encourages voter turnout within the Latino community in Charlotte. It’s a group that’s been underrepresented, both in elected offices and in voter turnout.
“For me, it's important that the 43,000 Latino registered to vote show up and vote because this is the way that we can show our collective power,” Mateo-Pascual said. “Thirty percent of the students in the Mecklenburg school district are Latino, and we don't have a voice (on the school board). This is the opportunity for us to have somebody that knows our community and that can represent and bring the need of our community to the table.”
This is the first election in which a Latina is running for a seat on the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools Board of Education.
Other community members echoed similar sentiments, such as Gina Esquivel. She is the director at the Lee Institute in Charlotte.
“We are now close to 15% of the population, so we have a strong population here that is present in all communities,” Esquivel said. “We want to make sure that we are seen and valued as long-term residents and leaders who are ready to collaborate and unite our causes.”
At 14.9% of Charlotte’s population, Latinos are the third-largest racial group in the city, behind white and Black residents, according to the latest US Census estimates.
In the 2022 election, though roughly 43,000 Latinos were registered, only about 11,000 voted, according to data from Lennin Caro, lead researcher at the Camino Research Institute. Mateo-Pascual and other community members attribute this to a lack of information on voting — especially in local races.
“A lot of it is because people don't have information,” Mateo-Pascual said. “They don't see the importance of voting locally. Most of the people are accustomed to voting for the presidential election. So in that way, the Latino civic engagement is working to educate the community to understand how important it is to vote locally because the electoral officials in our community are the ones that affect our everyday life.”
Caro has conducted voting surveys to better understand voting trends among the Latino population.
“Anecdotally, in my conversations with other Hispanic citizens, there are different reasons, but the one that comes up the most is that a lot of Hispanic citizens just don't know their candidates. They don't know who they are. They don't know what they stand for, and what's worse is that a lot of the information about candidates are in English, but not so much in Spanish.”
That gap prompted LCEC to collaborate with Camino, the Libre Initiative and Telemundo to host candidate forums.
“So we did one last year, which was a success,” Caro said. “We did it live at Camino. This year, we had a more controlled environment, inviting over 11 School Board candidates to be present at the studio, talking directly to a Hispanic audience as well as some city council members.”
Along with members from the Latino Civic Engagement, other community leaders attended the event as well, like Willie Fleming. He is the founder and president of the International Minority Coalition. He said it was important for him to be there because their voices are stronger together.
“If you keep people separate, you limit the amount of votes that you got, you limit the resources they got, and limit the force that people have,” Fleming said. “So this is good. This is good to bring people together.”
Early voting is open now until Nov. 4. To find your nearest polling place, visit https://vt.ncsbe.gov/RegLkup/. Election Day is Nov. 7.
