Given the seriousness of this issue, I am complimenting this piece with information on what Texas' high school principals can do to get out the vote (Title 1, Part 4, Chapter 81, Subchapter A, Rule §81.7).
"School Principals Must Serve as Deputy Voter Registrars
State law requires all high school principals to serve as deputy voter registrars, a duty that requires distribution of voter application forms to students who are or will be 18 years old during the school year. Download a high school voter registration card order form.
How Can You Comply with Law to Help Students Register to Vote During a Pandemic?
High schools are legally required to offer students who will be 18 by Election Day the opportunity to register to vote. One easy method is to send out the following message to those students: “Our records show that you are 18 years of age or will be 18 by Election Day. In Texas, you may register to vote at 17 years, 10 months! If you have a printer, fill out and mail in an application found at votetexas.gov. No printer? No problem! You may fill out a voter registration application at register2vote.org and have it mailed to you.”
Voting Resources from Raise Your Hand Texas
Visit this Raise Your Hand Texas’ webpage to make your voting plan and learn more about the candidate" (TASA, 2022, from Voting Elections Toolkit)
In short, principals, this message is for you to get your 18-year old students to register to vote. You're empowered by Texas state law to do this.
Parents of high school students should further insist that this happen. This one change in great numbers can begin to shift things in our state.
-Angela Valenzuela
Latino political power must grow with population
The future could be in the hands of young voters
The popularity of Bad Bunny, a Puerto Rican singer whose fans filled AT&T Stadium last Saturday should not come as a surprise in 2022: This past week, the census revealed that Latinos, for the first time, surpassed white residents as the state’s largest group.
This expected, yet long-awaited milestone comes with a caveat: Hispanics are still underrepresented in voting numbers and elected representatives.
There were 5.5 million eligible Hispanic voters in 2018 and 2.8 million were registered voters, but only 1.9 million went to the polls, according to the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials.
The trend has not changed since and, currently, there are only 45 Latino legislators in a body of 181 members. The Texas delegation in Congress has 36 representatives and just seven are Hispanic.
In 2018, a poll conducted by Jolt Texas, a left-leaning voter mobilization group, identified some reasons for this Latino apathy, ranging from mistrust of the political process to lack of information about the elections.
There is also another factor affecting these numbers: About 2.25 million voting-age Latinos in the state are not citizens.
Luis Fraga, from the Institute for Latino Studies in Notre Dame, has said that focusing on Latino voters in states like Texas is a good strategy for the future, but “campaigns are made with short-term decisions.”
Regardless of party politics, getting Hispanics to vote remains a challenge. As a voting bloc, they have been taken for granted by Democrats and ignored by Republicans, although this might be changing: There are signs in South Texas that conservative Latinos can be elected.
But also, Hispanics have not been consistent in developing leaders for political positions that can be appealing to all voting groups.
A recent effort that unfortunately was phased out in 2018 was the Latino Center for Leadership Development in Dallas which became a pipeline for leaders like Dallas City Council member Jaime Resendez, state Rep. Victoria Neave, Dallas ISD trustee Joe Carreon and former Dallas ISD board president Miguel Solis, among others.
This younger generation of leaders is already leaving its mark in Texas politics, all the more reason to invest in initiatives like this one.
Investing in future leaders is on par with educational opportunities and economic improvement, with clear sights on the younger state population.
Hispanics now represent 40.2% of Texans, while non-Hispanic whites account for 39.4%, according to the new census numbers. But among Texas children, they are even a larger group: 49.3% of Texans under the age of 18 are Latino.
In other words, those Bad Bunny fans may have the power to change Texas politics in the future, if we can get them to vote.
No comments:
Post a Comment