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In its first year, the initiative recruited over 1,200 partner organizations to host voter registration events, and today has over 1,800. Partners include well-known organizations like Rock the Vote, as well as a host of local institutions like churches and food banks. The day has been declared official by the National Association of Secretaries of State.
Gregory Cendana, the executive director of the Institute for Asian Pacific American Leadership and Advancement, one of NVRD’s partner organizations, says that the initiative is structured around “key community stakeholders who aren’t always the go-to people around civic engagement.”
“So we’re thinking about community health centers, we’re thinking about small businesses, we’re thinking about a variety of community organizations that don’t necessarily have civic engagement as their focus of work, to help them have voter registration as part of their program,” Cendana says.
He mentions Chambers of Commerce in ethnic communities, such as those reaching Asian American small business owners, as being key for outreach.
Also integral to the day’s success are partners like universities and community colleges, because of their ability to reach young eligible voters.
“Almost any [initiative] that aims to register voters in America is going to end up having about half the people it reaches be under the age of 30, often because they just haven’t been asked,” says Singer. “They need someone to talk to them.”
Many of Voto Latino’s NVRD efforts center around “reaching young Latinos through technology, media, and pop culture in ways that are relevant to them,” such as contests and celebrity partnerships, according to Reeves.
She adds that reaching young Latinos is also important because they are often “gatekeepers for their families. They’re translators for Mom, Dad, Grandma, for other folks in their family who maybe aren’t as fluent, or not as well-versed in the legal language of registering to vote.”
NVRD’s website provides online voter registration in 11 languages.
Other key partners for registering voters include organizations that work with new citizens or are embedded in immigrant communities, like the Korean Resource Center in Los Angeles, the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, and several chapters of OCA-Asian Pacific American Advocates.
For now, Singer hopes that more organizations will sign up as partners to promote the day and host events on the 23rd.
“It’s a good opportunity to do something simple and non-partisan, and just make sure that your own community is registered and ready to participate this fall,” he says.
