For Ana Maria Jemenez, celebrating the Day of the Dead on November 2^nd in Corona, Queens was not all about cheer and fun. She, along with other immigrants from Mexico, Columbia, Peru, Dominican Republic and El Salvador, instead talked about their concerns regarding the upcoming midterm elections and it’s effect on the immigration reform.

The DREAM Act, which was first introduced in 2001, provided some residential rights to illegal immigrants under the age of 35, allowing them to get work authorization and educational opportunities. So far only 15 states have their versions on the DREAM Act, including New York State.

“I brought my son illegally to this country,” said Jemenez, 39. “He is now 13 and goes to school. I want him to have good education and good future.”

Jemenez, unlike her son who is living in the U.S. under the DREAM Act, is facing deportation. Her case has been with the Immigration Services department for  two years. She lives in fear that one day someone would knock on her door and deport her back to Colombia.

Living in fear and barely making ends meet while working two jobs, Jemenez refuses to stay ignorant about her rights as an undocumented worker and constantly follows any developments on immigration reforms as well as senate, house, presidential, or even local government elections. Never use illegal alien..it is considered offensive.

“Yes, I cannot vote,” said Jemenez, who only has a little trace of a Colombian accent. “But it doesn’t mean that I don’t care. I always hope that immigrants like me would get more rights, just like President Obama promised.”

Jemenez, said she understands how the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives operate and is very concerned about the outcome of the midterm elections..

“If Republicans win, we, and I mean all immigrants, are going to be deported,” said Jemenez. “Republicans don’t like Latinos. But we work hard, we love this country. The jobs we do, American would never do.”

Jemenez works at a local grocery store, doing everything from scrubbing floors to working at the cash register. The storeowner pays her $6.75 per hour. Since she doesn’t have legal papers there is nobody she can complain to. According to Jemenez, if Republicans win the senate she will lose the little that she has now.

Miriam Guzman, 42, from Mexico, works as a fulltime babysitter for $10 an hour. If she weren’t an illegal immigrant, her salary would be $15 an hour.

“Family I work for is rich,” said Guzman. “They hired me because I speak Spanish and their children love me. They pay me less because they know I have no papers and no choice, but to accept what they give me.”

Miriam Guzman and her fiancé, Greorge Pateka. Photo by Maria Panskaya

Despite the fact that the midterm election turnout is usually quite low, with turnout of eligible voters never going beyond 50% according to the Center for Voting and Democracy, undocumented immigrants from Latin America fully understand that midterm elections can be even more important than the presidential election.

“What people don’t realize is that the outcome of the midterm elections will determine the future of the country and possibly effect the presidential election outcome in 2016,” said Alan Acosta, 34, a Hispanic community activist and volunteer, Queens. “I received my green card a year ago under the DREAM Act, after a nine-year-long battle with paper work, and I’m going to vote on Tuesday. Sometimes one vote can make a difference.”

Acosta came to the U.S. illegally from Dominican Republic when he was 19, before the DREAM Act was introduced. But the act eventually made him eligible for getting social security, then work authorization and citizenship.

“This was a dream come true,” said Acosta. “I want every immigrant to experience the joy and relief I experienced a year ago.”

According to Pew Research Center, the percentage of eligible Hispanic voters is dropping by seven percent each year nationwide. One of the issues of low turnout among Latinos is underrepresentation.

“We have a black president and the majority of congress, senate and house officials are white,” said Jemenez. “I want to see more Hispanic representatives. I feel like Latino population doesn’t vote that much is because there is nobody we can vote for.”

According to Migration Policy Institute, undocumented immigrants from Latin America represent 46% of all foreign born immigrants, who currently reside in the U.S., with 28% of them being Mexicans. Indians and Chinese, along with other Asian countries, represent 29% combined together. The other 25% are immigrants from Europe and Africa.

All immigrants who cross the border with the U.S. on illegal terms, whether smuggled on a ship or train or traveled with fake passports, have one dream in common—becoming the U.S. citizens. While the Obama administration has expressed strong support for numerous immigration reforms, like the DREAM Act, the majority of those propositions were voted down in the Senate.

In May 2014 New York State tried to expend the DREAM Act policy by enacting free college education to immigrants, but the initiative hadn’t been passed.

“It’s already hard enough for the president and his aids to pass any bill and to get it approved,” said Acosta. “And it’s going to be even worse if Republicans win the Senate. The next two years are going to be hell not only for the president, but also for all immigrants.”

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A new poll indicates that American Muslim voters are likely to vote at higher rates than other groups in the Nov. 4 elections.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations released a survey Friday of 1,500 American Muslims in six populous states; 69 percent said that they plan to vote in this upcoming election.

According to the United States Census Bureau, during the 2012 elections there was a 66 percent turnout among African-American voters, 64 percent turnout among non-Hispanic white voters and 49 percent turnout among Hispanic voters. The Pew Research center additionally stated that there has been a gradual decline in voter turnout among those who identified as white Protestants and white Catholics. The total voter turnout was 59 percent in the 2012 elections.

The CAIR survey, which also asked what issues the participants deemed most important, covered Muslim voters in California, Florida, Illinois, New York, Texas and Virginia. More than half, 51 percent, said they would vote for Democratic Party candidates; 23 percent declined to state their party leanings. This is projected to be part of a trend in high voter turnout among American Muslim voters through the past decade, as 81 percent answered that they would definitely vote in the 2012 election, and 89 percent said they vote regularly in a survey held during the 2006 midterm election.

The American Muslim population, according to the Pew Research Forum, increased from about 1.7 million to 2.6 million between 2000 and 2010. The Pew Research Center estimated in 2014 that there are about 2.75 million American Muslims throughout the country, and 600,000 to 1 million of them are New York City residents.

CAIR issued a press release on Thursday announcing its “Get Out The Vote” campaign to reach over 100,000 households in states estimated to have the highest concentrations of American Muslims — California, Florida, Illinois, New York, Texas and Virginia. Other efforts this election season include telephone campaigns by the Arab American Association of New York, as well as initiatives to get more American Muslims registered to vote.

Robert McCaw, government affairs manager at CAIR, said that efforts to encourage American Muslims to vote were similar to outreach to other faith and minority groups in the United States. Reaching out to houses of worships and holding candidate forums within community spaces are frequent methods to encourage participation.

According to the CAIR survey, the issues that American Muslims said they were most concerned about parallel the concerns of many other groups of American voters. Those issues include the economy, healthcare and education. U.S. foreign policy ranked much lower; only 5 percent of participants said that was their most important issue this election.

The CAIR survey highlights the increasing significance of Muslim voters in U.S. elections.

“There are a core of independent Muslim voters whose votes are up for grabs.” McCaw said, adding that politicians, particularly Republican candidates, should not keep alienating Muslims and advocating for what he calls “anti-Muslim positions.”

From their participation in the elections, and the issues they are most concerned about, American Muslim voters are similar to other voting groups and are just as invested in the future of their country as other Americans.

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Occupy Wall Street and the People’s Climate March; two movements that brought hundreds of thousands from around the nation and the world to New York City to make their voices heard. But tomorrow, when Americans make their way to the polling booths to cast their votes, the third-party candidates who hope to champion these causes will see only a few percent of the vote.

Dr. Steven Brams, Professor of Politics at New York University answers questions about third party candidates and the system.

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The midterm elections are scheduled for Tuesday, but whether or not scores of New York University’s students will hit the polls is still undecided.

“I think that it’s important for Americans to vote,” said Nicole Horowitz, 21, a student in the Gallatin School of Individualized Study, living in the West Village. “Ideally they should be well-informed on the issues, but I think that no matter what state you live in, it’s important to do what you can.”

But Horowitz’s ideals are not shared by everyone on the sprawling Greenwich Village campus, in the heart of Washington Square. NYU has 58,547 students.

Utkarsh Saddi, 21, a Leonard N. Stern School of Business student, living in New Jersey, said he will not vote.

“I do care what happens,” Saddi said. “But I’m just not interested in taking time to go vote. I have better things to do.”

Saddi added that he doesn’t care for either candidate on either platform, which, according to an analysis by The Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning & Engagement (CIRCLE) at Tufts University, is why 5.8 percent of registered voters ages 18-29 didn’t vote in the 2010 midterms.

Midterm elections occur halfway through the president’s four year term.

While President Barack Obama still has two more years in office and his name won’t be on a ballot at the midterms, the elections are considered a thumbs up or thumbs down on his performance. Government gridlock has plagued his presidency and the vote on Tuesday could either ease the gridlock or tighten it. On the ballot will be all 435 seats in the House of Representatives up for re-election, along with 36 Senate seats and 36 gubernatorial seats. Currently the House is controlled by Republicans and the Senate by Democrats.

Voting on who will fill the seats in the midterms, in addition to Horowitz, (who cares about environmentalism and sustainability), will be Francesea Querci, 20, a journalism student in the College of Arts and Science, living in Chinatown. Querci said she will fill out a ballot because she finds political participation extremely important. She’s interested in housing reform.

“Especially as somebody who is considered part of a younger generation, we should participate because we’re going to be the future leaders of this country,” Querci said. “And we need to put people in offices where we can get our voice out there.”

Since 1964, young voters ages 18-24 have consistently voted at lower rates than other age groups, according to an April 2014 report released by the U.S. Department of Commerce and the United States Census Bureau.

Nationwide, young voting rates dropped from 50.9 percent in 1964 to 38.0 percent in 2012. According to CIRCLE’s May 2013 fact sheet – with data obtained from the Current Population Survey (CPS) November Voting and Registration Supplements – the 2012 voter turnout of those aged 18-29 in the state of New York was at 42.4 percent versus 63.4 percent for those aged 30 and older.

The Commerce’s report also mentioned that voting and registration rates are historically lower in non-presidential election years, which we are currently in.

In addition, the number of votes cast during presidential election years from 1972-2012 also show shifts. CIRCLE reported that in the 2000 presidential election, 8.6 million votes were cast by 18-24 year-olds. Numbers increased in 2004 to 11.6 million and again in 2008 to 12.5 million before dipping in 2012 to 11.3 million votes cast.

Michael Pernick, 26, a School of Law student and active member on the NYU Law Democrats board, agreed that numbers have been rising in the youth vote and youth turnout in recent years, but he’s not sure if that will continue after Obama finishes his term.

“That’s a trend that I believe maintained itself that the youth vote has turned out more in recent elections, especially post-2008, than it has previously if you isolate all other variables,” Pernick said. “And that might just be the result of having Barack Obama on the ballot.”

With uncertainty of voter turnout in a non-presidential election year, another obstacle for students is them not registering in their new state. Adam Schulz, 19, a Gallatin student from Chicago, Ill., living in Union Square, said that he’s not voting in the midterms because he never registered in New York. About 10 percent of registered voters in the CIRCLE’s analysis didn’t vote in the 2010 midterms because they were out of town or away from home.

“I could see myself [registering] in the future possibly,” Schulz said. “It’s good to have a say … and I’m going to be spending the majority of my life for the next four years in New York City, so I think I should start getting involved with the voting process.”

Schulz being an out-of-state student represents much of the NYU student body, as the university is home to students from across the globe and across diverse backgrounds.

All 50 states embody the undergraduate student population, international students make up 20 percent of the university’s student body (8.954 students), and the 2013 freshmen class is 18 percent international from a record-breaking 87 countries.

Anibal Suriel, 19, a Stern student from Miami, Fla., living in Chinatown, said that he never planned to vote and isn’t interested, a reason why 17.2 percent of registered voters in 2010 didn’t make it to the midterm polls.

“It’s kind of a hassle, well not a hassle, it’s a process that I’m not familiar with,” Suriel said, adding that he doesn’t know how to register.

Also too busy with classes and extracurricular activities, like 33.5 percent of registered voters in the CIRCLE’s analysis, Suriel, said that he could be interested in voting in the future.

“I definitely would be interested in [voting], especially because political science is my second major,” Suriel said. “So I guess that’s something I should look into.”

 Joanna Bouras contributed to this report

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Public support for the education policy known as the Common Core standards has been free falling in New York State since Governor Andrew Cuomo implemented it in 2012. For Cuomo, it has become an issue in the upcoming elections.

Cuomo, a Democrat, leads his Republican opponent by 21 points, according to the latest Siena poll. But the question is what mandate he will have after the election, said Lawrence Mead, New York University professor and expert on American politics.

Teacher unions, which hold a lot of power in the Democratic Party, now oppose the Common Core. New York State United Teachers withdrew their support at the beginning of the year and asked for “major course corrections to its failed implementation plan,” in an official statement. Depending on the electoral results, Cuomo could face pressure to act on the Common Core issue.

The opposition against the education standards, a set of academic goals from kindergarten through high school, began on the Republican side but has moved to be an issue in both major parties. According to Mead, Republicans think the federal government is overstepping and prescribing what teachers should teach. Democrats feel that the policy was developed through an undemocratic process that benefits big corporations and that it has been poorly implemented, with little preparation for the teachers or students, he added.

Common Core has become a buzzword over the past month. In 2013, 62 percent of people polled nationwide had never heard about it; in 2014, 80 percent of those polled said they had heard about it, and 47 percent indicated they had heard a great deal or a fair amount, according to a PDK/Gallup poll. Opposition has increased hand in hand with awareness: five out of 10 New York State residents answered that the implementation should be stopped in New York, according to the latest Siena Poll.

Cuomo has been challenged about it multiple times during the campaign. In the Democratic Party primaries, Zephyr Teachout, professor at Fordham University, campaigned against Common Core implementation. Cuomo won the primary but still faces opposition on the Common Core, this time from his Republican opponent, Rob Astorino, who has launched a “Stop Common Core” effort to rally voters against the cause.

After many months of not taking any clear stance on the matter, the Cuomo campaign released an ad on Monday pledging to “stop using Common Core scores for at least five years, and then only if our children are ready.” The campaign did not respond to requests for comment.

The implementation of the standards

Katie Lapham, a first grade teacher at P.S. 214 in Brooklyn, says she understands the benefits of standards as a framework that gives teachers “freedom to teach and students … freedom to learn,” but she strongly opposes the Common Core standards as they are.

“Our schools need smaller class sizes, common sense curriculum, teacher-created curriculum and teacher-created authentic performance based assessments, project based, meaningful, inspiring work,” she said, adding that New York State has created fixed curricula, instead of only giving a general set of goals.
Lapham, member of the Movement of Rank and File Educators caucus within New York State United Teachers, worries that the curricula do not help her students, adding that the ReadyGEN ELA English Language Arts program is “dull and uninspiring.”

“The vocab is not appropriate for the lower grades,” Lapham said. “Spending five to seven days closely reading a picture book is boring; an ineffective way to promote literacy.” She has many English-language learners in her class and is worried that taking a test that reflects negatively on their learning will impact their confidence and increase the number of dropouts.

Garth Wolkoff, a teacher at the High School for Public Service in Brooklyn, said that a set of standards that helps the students “be more analytical thinkers rather than to memorize … can’t be bad.” He likes the idea of teachers teaching less subject matter, but more in depth, giving students more analytical skills, but he finds the standards oppressive at the elementary school level.

The standards are “asking very young students like Lucy to read and do more math,” Wolkoff said, referring to his 6-year-old daughter. “Playtime has been taken out of kindergarten, for example, and she is learning ‘Common Core’ math.”

Opting out

Parents and teachers are uniting to fight the Common Core tests. In April 2014, some teachers opted out of the test and many parents pulled their kids out of school the day of the test. Although there are no exact statistics yet, there were some 1,000 students who refused to take the math test in New York City, according to City Councilman Daniel Dromm. The Journal News reported that more than 3,000 students in the Lower Hudson Valley opted out, a fourfold increase compared with the previous year, according to the newspaper.

The MORE caucus within the teachers union is one of the most outspoken critics of the Common Core. The testing was “produced not by teachers, but by corporations,” MORE’s official statement reads. The movement argues that the standards “were written without meaningful teacher input, and educators do not have the freedom to use them as they see fit.”

Teachers and parents fear that the standards are too focused on “college and career readiness” to the detriment of “civic-mindedness, student health, and social and emotional growth,” according to the MORE statement.

Lapham said that, because of the emphasis on the tests, students “are not getting what they need both academically and emotionally.”

“If Cuomo is re-elected, expect more of the same,” Lapham added. “However, parents and teachers will continue to speak out. (The) grassroots movement is growing. Expect more and more opt-outs in the spring.”

Education standards are unlikely to be a decisive factor in the elections, but the Common Core will continue to be an issue in the political arena.

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By Zehra Rehman

“I’m tired,” Elaine Kateb heard over the intercom before it went silent. Kateb, 70, then went back down the apartment building’s stairs. She and many other volunteers had spent that rainy day ringing doorbells in their neighborhoods to persuade people to vote for Domenic Recchia.

The race for New York’s 11th Congressional District seat has been one of the most competitive in the current election cycle, although the latest poll by NY1/Capital New York/Siena College shows Republican Michael Grimm leading 53-34.

Grimm won his seat in 2010 by defeating a Democratic incumbent. Democrat Recchia is running against him to represent Staten Island and part of south Brooklyn. Grimm has the advantage of incumbency but has been indicted on 20 federal charges including tax evasion and fraud. Democrats have looked at this as an opportunity to win back the only Republican congressional seat in New York City.

The Recchia campaign is based in two offices in Staten Island and one in south Brooklyn. The Democratic Party has been strongly backing Recchia including providing resources such as campaign staff and political ads. The campaign is made up of a paid staff along with hundreds of volunteers. This includes a core group of regular volunteers who have been essential for the Recchia campaign. Ranging in age from 10 to 85 years old, they are motivated by a combination of idealism and a desire to see the incumbent defeated.

The Recchia campaign has divided its activities into three stages. The first phase, which ended on Oct. 10, was voter registration. The second stage is canvassing and persuading voters to choose Recchia. The last stage, from Nov. 1 to 4, is Get Out the Vote, during which the campaign will make about one-third of its total voter contact. The GOTV efforts will be launched from staging locations in Staten Island and Brooklyn. In these last four days, the campaign will receive volunteers from across the country including students, union members and congressional staffers. Until then, the campaign staff and their team of volunteers do all the work.

Daren Dowlat describes himself as “a volunteer who came in and never left.” He makes phone calls to get more volunteers, goes door to door to give voters information and carried out voter registration. Dowlat started volunteering while looking for a job in the information technology field. After working on the campaign, he is considering a change in career direction to “try to clean up politics.”

Because of a disability, 81-year-old Phyllis Masci is not able to go door to door. She comes to the campaign’s Brooklyn office three days a week to work the phone bank and recruit more volunteers. The rest of the week she makes phone calls from home. Her reasons for volunteering are a dislike of the incumbent and a belief that Recchia will be a good representative of her district in Washington.

“I know he will do a lot for the community. I know he will!” she emphasized.

Volunteer Pat Sanchez has been working on campaigns for decades, starting with fundraising for Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign. A staunch liberal from Bay Ridge, she wants “to get this neighborhood blue.” She was surprised that Grimm remained popular in Staten Island after a video surfaced of him threatening a reporter. A recent opinion poll also showed that 24 percent of Staten Island voters are less likely to vote for Recchia because he lives in Brooklyn. The majority of the voters in the district live in Staten Island, where Grimm lives.

With the race drawing increasing attention, volunteers are arriving from outside New York and even one from another continent. Quentin Lefevre came from Paris to volunteer for the Recchia campaign. “I love the things that he wanted to implement in New York,” he said of Recchia. Lefevre also hopes to learn from this campaign and apply the experience to French political campaigns.

With a contact rate of less than 10 percent, door-to-door canvassing is a tedious part of campaigning, and one where volunteers are most needed. “Canvassing is becoming more important. Usually it doesn’t change minds but it turns out votes,” said Steven Brams, professor of politics at New York University. As part of the canvassing, campaign staff and volunteers try to persuade potential voters to sign pledge cards, which increase voter turnout by 6 to 8 percent.

After weeks of making phone calls for the campaign, Kateb went door-to-door for the first time on Oct. 11. Even when she made contact with voters, many refused to talk. While joking about “being too old for this” and it being “as much fun as a root canal,” she rang doorbells across Bay Ridge. She volunteers for Recchia because she wants to “work with candidates in whom I believe” and because Grimm is facing criminal charges. Above all, she feels a civic duty to participate in the political process, pointing out that “people in other countries would die for the opportunity to vote.”

With days left until the Nov. 4 election, campaign staff and volunteers are putting all their energy into getting their candidate elected.

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By Carmen Cuesta Roca

A new political party will appear on ballots come Nov. 4: the Women’s Equality Party.

Governor Andrew Cuomo is the mastermind behind this creation, despite already belonging to the Democratic Party. The new group – an extension of his Women’s Equality Agenda, which the state legislature has not passed – has received mixed reviews not only from the Republican opposition, but also from women whose lives Cuomo proposes to better.

The 10-point Women’s Equality Agenda seeks to improve many aspects of women’s lives, including pay equity, access to abortion and protection for domestic abuse victims. The state legislature has not adopted any of the 10 points since Cuomo introduced them in January 2013.

With campaign season in full swing, Cuomo is once again promoting this agenda. The governor has visited Albany, Syracuse and Rochester in his tour bus, the “Women’s Equality Express.” He has also released a campaign ad with his three daughters and Sandra Lee, his girlfriend.

“New York State is the equality capital of the nation, but we still have more to do,” Cuomo said in a speech announcing the Women’s Equality Act. “Not everyone has reached full equality in our society.”

Gena Lovett, president of New York Women’s Agenda, supported Cuomo saying, “What is needed is a vigorous, collective effort to make New York the best place for women. Governor Cuomo’s 10-point Women’s Equality Act will help make that a reality.”

Cuomo’s opposition disagrees. Zephyr Teachout, who lost to Cuomo in the Democratic primary, said, “A lot of times I just see it as half a million dollars to get the name ‘Women’s Equality Party’ next to ‘Andrew Cuomo’ on the ballot—a high-priced advertisement.”

New York has not updated its abortion laws since 1970. The access to abortion provision of Cuomo’s agenda would permit late-term abortions on the grounds of preserving the mother’s health, including emotional and psychological factors. The current law allows abortions after 24 weeks only in order to save the mother’s life.

Support for Cuomo comes from those who are thrilled finally to have a prominent elected official who isn’t running away from the more controversial women’s issues, such as access to abortion.

NARAL Pro-Choice New York has publicly endorsed Cuomo. Tara Sweeney, director of communications for the organization, said, “It is absolutely right and necessary that he championed a bill and a provision that will improve women’s lives and set a precedent for the kinds of legislation we should be passing.”

The anti-abortion community has spoken out against the bill. Executive director of NYS Right to Life, Lori Kehoe, said, “It makes clear the reality that this abortion ‘rights’ movement cares as little about women as they do about children.”

The Women’s Equality Agenda has been a hallmark of Cuomo’s work from the beginning of this legislative session, and “that stayed exactly the same when he transitioned into campaign mode,” according to Sweeney.

Under New York election law, candidates can run on multiple party lines, allowing their names to appear more than once on the ballot. Electoral fusion occurs when two or more political parties list the same candidate, pooling the votes and giving minor parties more influence over the results.

With the creation of this new party, the governor will appear on four ballot lines on Election Day: Women’s Equality, Democratic, Independence and Working Families. The last of these parties endorsed Cuomo after he suggested undoing his previous refusal to support a Democratic takeover of the Senate leadership. Cuomo said in a video shown during the Working Families Party convention in June, “To make this agenda a reality, we must change the Senate leadership.”

Cuomo recently endorsed his first Democratic candidate for the State Senate, Adrienne Esposito. But at a rally on Oct. 11, she was not offered a speaking spot. The rally promoted the Women’s Equality Party, a ballot line on which Esposito will not appear.

Supporters of Teachout issued a statement opposing the Women’s Equality Party: “This new party is not for women; instead it is using women for political play.”

Cuomo has exhibited strong leadership on same-sex marriage and gun control, but his economic policies have not always been favorable to women. Earlier this year he blocked New York Mayor Bill de Blasio’s plan to raise the city’s minimum wage. More than six in 10 of those workers are women, according to the National Women’s Law Center. Women are also the majority of workers in the hospitals that Cuomo has allowed to close.

Caron Gentry , an expert in feminist theory and gender studies who taught at Abilene Christian University in Texas and is now a lecturer at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, said, “I think it’s great to raise awareness about issues, but if it is a ploy or a manipulation, then there is a problem in that the issue of gender is not understood in all its complexity or the promises will be abandoned.”

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By Nicki Fleischner

The speaker looked up at a PowerPoint slide that showed a funnel with two labels: “Latino population” at the wide top and “Latino voters” at the narrow bottom.

“The funnel is just how I think of it,” Angelo Falcón, president of the National Institute for Latino Policy, a nonpartisan group, told the audience. “Up top we have this enormous Latino population in the U.S., but then that trickles down to the number that are eligible to vote, fewer that are registered, and even fewer who actually cast a ballot.”

As Election Day, nears, questions of how to increase Latino voter turnout and address obstacles facing Latino voters have been pushed to the forefront. Falcón was one of four speakers at “The Latino Vote In 2014” panel on Oct. 15 hosted by the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan institute affiliated with New York University School of Law.

In the recent past, Latinos have strongly supported Democratic candidates — with President Barack Obama winning 71 percent of the Latino vote in 2012. But, with the failure of the Democratic Party to pass comprehensive immigration reform, the Latino vote may no longer be taken for granted.

On Nov. 4, the U.S. will hold midterm elections for all 435 seats in the House of Representatives and 33 of the 100 seats in the Senate, as well as other regional positions on a state-by-state basis. Democrats could lose their majority in the Senate, further polarizing the legislative and executive branches and impeding action in Washington.

As their population grows, Latinos have become an increasingly important voting bloc. According to the Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan group, Latinos make up 11.3 percent of eligible voters. Between now and 2030, Latinos are expected to account for 40 percent of the growth in the U.S. electorate.

Latinos have historically failed to turn out to vote, however. During the last midterm elections, in 2010, only 31.2 percent of eligible Latino voters cast their ballots, as compared with 44 percent of black voters and 48.6 of white voters.

The reasons behind this funnel effect are numerous, and Latino organizations are striving to combat this trend. Some organizations have used National Hispanic Heritage Month, which is celebrated from Sept. 15 to Oct. 15, as a platform for mobilizing the Latino community. Groups that work to educate and empower Latino citizens, such as Voto Latino and Make the Road New York, have held voter registration drives and used social media to encourage Latinos to make their voices heard.

“For our heritage, let’s defend our rights/reshape our Government #PowerofOurVote,” Rosario Dawson, Latina actress and Voto Latino chairwoman, tweeted on Oct. 10. Latinos are the nation’s youngest ethnic group, with the median age at 18. The #PowerofOurVote hashtag has become a part of the mobilization effort as organizations use Twitter to connect with young voters.

Daniel Altschuler, a coordinator for Make the Road New York, has registered over 5,000 Latinos since August.

“Our message to the people in the community resonates,” Altschuler said. “It is that people need to go out in November to vote for their families. The Latino community needs to expand its political muscle.”

Latinos have failed to register and vote for legal and logistical reasons.

“As a general demographic, Latinos and other low-income groups tend to move a lot and are unaware of the change-of-address forms necessary for renewing their voter status,” Altschuler said.

Myrna Peréz, a director at the Brennan Center for Justice, said that there is “a partisan and racial component” to new, stricter voter identification laws in states such as Texas.

Jorge Mursuli, a panelist representing Dominicanos USA, which works to educate and mobilize Dominican American voters, said that the issue goes far beyond “red” versus “blue” state, however.

“You would think that in a state like New York where Latinos have a relatively sure political footing things would be better,” Mursuli said. “But there have been many challenges.”

Mursuli described his experience during 2010 midterm elections when poor signage, lack of Latino poll workers and utter incompetence at poll sites deterred many registered voters. Of the dozen or so voting sites Mursuli visited in the Bronx, a borough of New York that is over 50 percent Latino, he saw not a single Latino poll worker.

“I saw voter suppression first hand,” Mursuli said. “And voter suppression does not happen to eighth generation white people. It just doesn’t.”

Beyond registration and Election Day issues, the national spotlight on immigration concerns may further impact Latino turnout on Nov. 4.

In a 2013 poll conducted by Latino Decisions, a nonpartisan think tank dedicated to Latino political opinion research, 75 percent of Latinos surveyed said it was extremely or very important for Congress and the president to address immigration reform within the year, even in light of other issues facing the government.

One year later, comprehensive immigration reform remains an unresolved issue. After Obama did not fulfill his promise to provide deportation relief to undocumented immigrants by the end of the summer, many Latinos became disillusioned.

“There is obviously grave disappointment with Congress and the Obama administration for not taking proactive steps to stop the separation of families,” Altschuler said.

According to Gallup Polls, Obama’s approval ratings have varied the most with Latinos over any other group since he won re-election in 2012. In December 2012, Obama had 75 percent approval rating among Latinos; his rating is now at 48.

Falcón said that there is no way to determine how Latino voters will respond to the immigration issue on Election Day, but it has become a large part of the conversation, with individuals and organizations promoting conflicting messages.

“Some say that now more than ever Latinos need to prove their political clout by voting,” Falcón said. “Others are as extreme as to say we should hold sit-ins this election, refuse to vote and prove to Democrats how much they need us.”

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