A new nonprofit called Vote Win/Votamos Ganamos held its first event focused on civic education for underrepresented groups, like the Hispanic community, on Tuesday evening. The goal was to help voters understand their official voters guides.
Chelan County does not offer its official voters guide in any language other than English, so community advocates like Mars Hinojos have translated it into Spanish and are making them available to the Spanish-speaking community of Chelan County.
But Votamos Ganamos isn’t just focused on Chelan County. The organization is gearing up to be operational in Douglas, Grant, Okanogan and Yakima counties as well, they said. It’s also non-partisan. They are not telling people who to vote for, only educating them on how to vote.
“We want to be big on not telling people who to vote for directly. We like to have people think for themselves,” Hinojos said. “A big part of that civic education part is that have to let people think for themselves.”
The nonprofit is in partnership with CAFÉ, which is a non-profit organization that advances family and community growth through education by serving a culturally diverse community and providing opportunities in leadership, civic and social engagement, literacy development, and academic advancement, according to its website.
The ultimate goal is to increase Hispanic voter turnout in Central Washington because it has been very low in recent elections.
“When we did our last survey, I want to say that this was only for the Hispanic population of Wenatchee, but we had about 7000 registered voters and for a non-presidential, so any general or primary election, we only had out of those 7000, 700 come out to vote,” Hinojos said.
You can watch my interview with them above, and visit Vote Win/Votamos Ganamos’ website here.
