by Angelo Falcón
NEWS ANALYSIS – The increasing interest in the role of the Latino vote in the Democratic primaries for United States president has opened up an important opportunity to educate resolutionthe U.S. public about the Latino community.
We have, hopefully, dispelled the myth that Latinos will not vote for a black for president. We have, in the process, also demonstrated that the Latino vote should not be taken for granted by the Democratic Party establishment, as the Clinton campaign now apparently view Latinos as her last best hope to revive her failing campaign.
When talking about the Latino vote, reference is made to the fact that the Latino population in the United States now stands at 44 million. This figure is incorrect. There are actually 48 million Latinos in this country, if you include the 4 million living in the U.S. territories of Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and others.
These are all U.S. citizens, mostly Puerto Ricans, with a significant number of Dominicans.
One could argue that they should not be included in the Latino population count when discussing the presidential election because, although U.S. citizens, these 4 million do not have the right to vote for president.
But, it turns out, they do vote in the nominations process of the two major parties, so they are relevant to a discussion of the role of the Latino vote in selecting the next President of the United States.
Take the case of Puerto Rico:
Island Puerto Ricans will be holding their caucus and convention on June 7, making it the very last race for the nomination before the party conventions this summer. In the Democratic Party, Puerto Rico has a delegation of 63, which is larger than that of 24 states. If the party upholds its sanctions against Florida and Michigan for violating party rules in the scheduling of their primaries, Puerto Rico’s delegation to convention will be larger than that of the 26 states.
In the past, Puerto Rico’s was a winnertake-all system, but party rules have changed so that it is now supposed to be proportional.
While the smart money had been that Clinton could count on all of these delegates, recent events are reflecting the Obama tsunami, and the presumed solidity of the Puerto Rican delegation in this regard is crumbling.
Most recently, the Governor of Puerto Rico, Aníbal Acevedo Vilá, has endorsed Barack Obama, and it appears that Obama has raised more contributions than Clinton in Puerto Rico. The notion, advanced by Michael Barone and other analysts, that Puerto Rico would deliver all of as I like to call it, colony) like Puerto Rico even has the possibility of determining who would be the candidate for president of a major U.S. political for failing to use appropriate operational practices.
The lower figure represents actual costs to remediate soils around all 378 of Chevron’s former Ecuador production facilities, plus compensation for health care costs, a water system, loss of indigenous land, ecosystem impacts, infrastructure improvements, and other categories of damages.its delegates to one candidate and could be decisive being that it would be the last contest in a long nominations battle, is not panning out.
Despite this, the very idea that a territory (or, party is deliciously ironic, given that its residents, all U.S. citizens, do not have the right to vote for U.S. president.
In this inequity, they are joined by another million U.S. citizens in the territories of the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, Samoa, the Northern Mariana Islands and other smaller islands, as well as the District of Columbia.
Some will note that it is perhaps no coincidence that these are areas populated overwhelmingly by people of color.
So in this very exciting presidential election where it is important that we also understand there are over 5 million U.S. citizens in the territories (colonies) and the District of Columbia who continue to be disenfranchised by not having the right to vote for President or for voting members of Congress. The so-called “Latino vote” is dilute by this inequality, as is its potential impact. Of course, none of the presidential candidates are raising this issue. Hispanic Link.
(Angelo Falcón is founder and president of the National Institute for Latino Policy, based in New York City. E-mail him at afalcon@latinopolicy.org).
