Defending Democracy With Mighty Partner Mi Familia Vota
If democracy hinges on all people’s voices being counted, then the work of Mi Familia Vota Education Fund is at the crux of democracy’s survival in the United States. With the Latino population being the fastest growing voting bloc in the country, making sure they have the ability to vote—and in an educated and intentional manner—is the key.
“We clearly understand that the future of our democracy is dependent on the level and quality of involvement of the Latino community,” says Carlos Duarte, Chief Development Officer with the nonprofit Mi Familia Vota Education Fund. The organization works to unite Latino, immigrant, and allied communities to promote social and economic justice through citizenship workshops, voter registration and voter participation. We chatted with Duarte to get the on-the-ground picture of how they’re defending against targeted attacks on democracy.
Photo Credit @ MI Familia Vota
Empowering Voters, Protecting Democracy
“Right now, the biggest threat we’re facing, in addition to environmental catastrophe, is the challenges to democracy—not only in our country, but actually it's a threat of fascism and authoritarianism all across the globe,” Duarte says. He points to election denialists, white supremacists and fascist authoritarians who have a decisive voice in a major party, running as candidates at all different levels of government and deploying voter intimidation techniques.
“It's very telling that now even a private group in Colorado feels emboldened to visit voters to question them about alleged fraud,” he says “and they do this while being armed. So they are intimidating voters at their homes, right? This is unprecedented, that boldness.”
In response, Mi Familia Vota Education Fund has been fighting back through lawsuits that challenge voter suppression efforts by state governments, including Texas, Arizona and others, as well as, for the very first time, against the private group intimidating voters at their doors.
Data: A Powerful Weapon
A crucial piece of organizing and empowering voters effectively is data collection. As the largest Latino organization with field capacity, Mi Familia Vota Education Fund is taking their collection and use of data to the next level—perhaps most importantly by disaggregating their voting population.
“It's not the same to have a Mexican American in Arizona, Nevada, or Colorado, and compare them to a Cuban voter in Florida,” Duarte says. “So when you look at how they are performing, you see that again in Arizona and Nevada, the Mexican vote in particular was instrumental in fending off these election denialists. So it’s very important to start improving on our data collection and that's one of the pieces that we're doing as an organization.”
One of the tenets of the Mi Familia Vota Education Fund model, Duarte says, is that they have a year-round organizing process. They are constantly talking to voters about all the different issues that they organize around, including the economy, environment, education, healthcare, immigration, and others. And through better data collection, polling, and their constant engagement with voters, the organization is generating models to better identify where people are so that they can educate, empower, and mobilize them to have an impact on key elections.
Photo Credit @ MI Familia Vota
Building Relationships With Voters
Perhaps the biggest challenge to this work is disinformation, Duarte says, as Latinos have been specifically targeted by intentional, strategic disinformation campaigns.
“With the access that we have on social media, the formation of private groups through WhatsApp, the access to YouTube, it's been very well documented how Latinos in particular are being misinformed,” he says. “And we saw that very clearly with Covid, but also obviously with elections.”
This targeting is not new, Duarte explains: “I remember when I was in Arizona two decades ago, they were actually sending flyers letting us know that the election was one day after the actual election day, right?” he says.
The best way to fight that sort of misinformation is not to try to counter it on the same level—or to drop in only in election years—it’s by having an established, consistent connection with voters. By being a trusted source, and continually engaging. Which is why Mi Familia Vota Education Fund aims to build long-term relationships in the Latino community.
Connecting Everyday Life to Policy and Elections
Another key motivation for Mi Familia Vota Education Fund’s year-round organizing process is to help voters understand how elections and government policies shape their everyday life, like access to affordable healthcare, for example.
“The challenge is, how do we make the connection between the everyday struggles of people with the policies that can help that, and with the people who are elected to actually pass and enact those policies?” Duarte says. “And I think that that is the yearly conversation that needs to happen in educating people around what matters to them on a daily basis.”
Duarte says he’s seen great examples of voters making that connection—especially when organizers help focus them on local races. For example, in 2016, many voters were bombarded by disinformation and didn’t want to engage with either presidential candidate.
“But we were able to get them out to vote when we started talking to them about the sheriff’s race in which one of the candidates had committed to taking ICE out of the Sheriff’s Office, while the other was committed to keeping the collaboration,” Duarte says. There are always specific issues that will affect and are relevant to people, often connected with lower-level government officials. “So it's just a matter of that, having that conversation and that strategy in our arsenal,” he says.
Photo Credit @ MI Familia Vota
Leading the Way With Hope
Looking forward, Mi Familia Vota Education Fund is building partnerships and strategies, identifying areas where the Latino community is going to make a difference across multiple levels of government—and then engaging in those communities. That means identifying specifically what motivates those voters, and updating data throughout the election so they can engage voters with real conversation. Voter education will be crucial, Duarte says, and Mi Familia Vota Education Fund will be focusing on helping the Latino community understand we do have trustworthy election officials and election systems.
“So we are going to be doing a series of town halls to explain to the community what are all of the mechanisms that make our election safe, because we are anticipating that election deniers are going to try and repeat the 2020 book,” he says.
Despite the immense challenges, Duarte says he has hope going forward, and it’s based on the intersectional commitment to democracy he’s seeing.
“That's something beautiful,” he says. “When you see Black, Latino, White, Asian-American, Native American, trans, LGBTQ, women, everybody just working together to save this democracy and becoming more sophisticated in the way that we are coordinating with each other. That is what gives me hope. Even though we're facing a horrible challenge, I think that all of us are stepping up, and I'm confident that we are going to be victorious in 2024.”
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Photo Credit @ MI Familia Vota