Bloomberg: AZ bill targets early ballots key to Latino turnout
March 14, 2012
A Bloomberg news report focused on Republican-backed election bills in the state Legislature that opponents believe target Latino voters, who tend to vote Democratic:
In Arizona, Latinos have been mobilized by opposition to the state’s 2010 immigration crackdown and to Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, an 80-year-old Republican elected to his sixth term as he faced a federal civil rights lawsuit over his treatment of Latinos.
Work by advocacy groups and campaigns helped to increase voter participation by Hispanics to 18 percent of all voters in Arizona last year, up from 16 percent in 2008, according to an analysis of exit polls by the Pew Hispanic Center. That wasn’t enough to deliver the state for the president, defeat Arpaio or send a Democrat to the U.S. Senate.
Still the state is projected to turn from red to blue by 2025 as a disproportionately high number of young Latino citizens, who are much more likely to vote Democratic, comes of age, according to a report last year by the Morrison Institute Latino Public Policy Center at Arizona State University in Phoenix.
Read: Arizona bill targets early ballots key to Latino turnout
Read the Morrison Institute report: Arizona's Emerging Latino Vote
