It’s no secret that this election season has included many attempts to suppress voters of color—be it North Carolina’s alleged illegal cancellation of voter registrations or the threat of voter intimidation tactics by White supremacists in states such as Pennsylania. Now, officials in historically Republican states are allegedly using harmful—and sometimes illegal—tactics to keep the growing Latinx electorate from swinging the states blue, reports NBC News.
Voting problems are occurring in states like Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, Virginia and Ohio. In Texas, specifically, the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund won a court case last week (October 28) ordering Bexar County election officials “to immediately remove all illegal voter ID signs that contained false information,” NBC News reports. In addition, the failure for officials to provide bilingual voting information on their websites violates the Voting Rights Act.
Per the story:
These issues are being raised as the numbers show a substantial increase in early voting among Latinos in key states. Using voter file data gathered by TargetSmart, NBC News found that in Florida, the share of Hispanic early voters increased from 9.89 percent in Oct 30, 2012 to 13.77 percent in Nov. 1, 2016.
A separate poll by Latinx political research tank Latino Decisions found that roughly 40 percent of Latinxs “encountered some difficulty in casting a vote or registering to vote for this election.”