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Latino voters are considered pivotal to the presidential
election this November, and are being heavily courted by both
Democratic incumbent Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt
Romney. If they turn out in large numbers, Latinos could sway
the outcome in several swing states.
In an analysis based on government data, civil rights group
The Advancement Project identified legal barriers that could
deter voter registration and participation among eligible
Latinos. In some of those states, the group's researchers said,
the number of voter-eligible Latino citizens potentially blocked
by those barriers exceeds the margin of victory in the 2008
election.
``Like African-Americans, Latinos have experienced decreased
access and correspondingly lower levels of voter registration
and participation than non-Hispanic whites,'' said the report,
which was being released Monday.
The report called for repeal of policies that wrongfully inhibit
Latino voters, and asked that the Justice Department investigate
and prosecute ``any related voting rights violations.''
According to census data, there were more than 21 million
Latinos of voting age in 2010. They comprised roughly 10 percent
of all eligible voters and 8 percent of registered voters in the
U.S.
Among eligible Latinos in 2010, 6.3 million said they were not
registered to vote, and 10.8 million—about half of those of
voting age—said they did not vote, the report said.
By comparison, the report said, there were 172.4 million
non-Hispanic white citizens eligible to vote in 2010, with
nearly 18 percent unregistered and 38 percent who said they did
not vote.
There are three significant barriers to Latino voter
participation, researchers said: citizenship-based voter purges,
proof of citizenship requirements and photo identification laws.
Sixteen states have either adopted or are pursuing
citizenship-related purges of their voter rolls, the report
said. Those states are Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado,
Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, New Mexico, North
Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and Washington.
Those states are home to nearly 5.5 million registered Latino
voters, and 1.1 million naturalized citizens from Latin America.
Colorado and Florida identified voters for possible purging by
comparing their voter registrations with driver's license
databases that show which voters indicated they were
immigrants—thereby creating a problem, the report said.
``Naturalized citizens typically received their driver's
licenses when they were legal immigrants but before becoming
naturalized citizens (and before registering to vote);
therefore, this method generates lists of voters to be checked
that targets naturalized citizens,'' the report said.
Florida stopped its effort to remove noncitizens from its voter
rolls once officials realized that they were using an outdated
database to check citizenship.
As of last month, laws requiring additional citizenship
documents—a certified birth certificate, passport or
naturalization papers—in order to register to vote were in
effect in Georgia, might take effect in Alabama and Arizona
later this year, and had been proposed in several states, the
report said.
Such a demand was ``previously unheard of'' in the U.S., the
report said, mainly because federal protections against
noncitizens registering to vote already were in place. Asking
for extra paperwork effectively puts ``onerous and sometimes
expensive'' requirements on Latino voters at a disproportionate
rate over others, researchers said.
The same is true for ``restrictive'' photo identification laws
in nine states: Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Mississippi,
Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin,
the report said.
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