GOP teaches importance of voting

-By Tom Toles at the Washington Post

The rallies across the nation are a sign that the Hispanic population really knows how to organize. This new found political motivation could translate into larger Hispanic voter turnout in the 2006 election and beyond. The GOP has been reaching out to Hispanic populations and had been making some progress. While the Hispanic population is diverse and doesn't all vote the same way, many Hispanics have voted conservative in the past because their religious beliefs lean them toward pro-life candidates.

Hispanics are a growing segment of the population but they haven't always voted in large numbers. From the Public Policy Institute of California last year:

About one in three Californians is Latino—a total of about 12 million residents. In 2000, the U.S. Census Bureau designated California as the first large "majority-minority" state, with non-Hispanic whites representing just under half of the state’s population. By the 2020 Census, Latinos are expected to outnumber non-Hispanic whites in the state.

California’s voting population does not currently reflect the state’s diversity. Latinos make up about 28 percent of California’s adult population but only 14 percent of California voters most likely to turn out in elections. Overall, nearly three-quarters of the state’s likely voters are white.

The rallies we have seen in the last couple of weeks suggest that is about to change and with the GOP saying many of the friends and family members of Hispanic voters should all be felons, I wonder which way they will be voting?

We can and should secure our borders without making demons out of immigrants, but Congress went home before they finished dealing with this issue. That means the rallies we saw here in Madison and elsewhere yesterday are the tip of the iceberg.