Catholics organize national campaign to register young Latino voters

Catholic organizations have launched a nationwide campaign to register young Latino citizens to vote.  This Catholic program has the potential to add a huge number of young Latinos to the voter rolls before the November election.   

The campaign is named "#Every3Seconds".  Around 800,000 Latinos turn 18 each year, according to the Pew Research Center. The majority of them were born in the U.S. or are naturalized citizens, eligible to vote in the 2020 election.

#Every30Seconds' name is based on Pew's above statistic of 800,000 Latinos turning 18 a year; That equates to roughly one every 30 seconds, the campaign says. 

The national campaign is led by Latino young adults and organized by La RED, the National Catholic Network de Pastoral Juvenil Hispana; the National Catholic Council for Hispanic Ministry; the National Catholic Partnership on Disabilities; The Office of Hispanic and Ethnic Ministry of the Joliet, Illinois, Diocese; and Instituto Fe y Vida, as well as several national faith-based organizations.

"We need to encourage our young Hispanic Catholics to register and to vote," said Adriana Visoso, president of La RED. "And [we need] to ensure that no political affiliations or candidates will be recommended in any part of the campaign. … We just want to ensure that they know that they have power, that they have a right to vote, to decide."

Verónica López is a young adult organizer for the #Every30Seconds campaign. She says voting is an important part of living Catholic social teaching, and she hopes to empower other young Latino Catholics to join her at the polls in November (Courtesy Verónica López/ Verónica Salgado)

López, who moved to the U.S. when she was 12 and became a citizen at 21, said ever since she became eligible, she's made an effort to educate herself about the issues that matter to her and her community, and pick the candidates who best represent those values. She said voting is important to her as a way to live out Catholic social teaching and advocate for people in her community who can't vote. 

"Being Catholic compels you to go out, to be informed, to really exercise your civic duty, to know who you're voting for, and to get involved with all of the issues and all of the concerns that affect us all," she said. "Because something that affects just one person in the other part of the country; it's going to affect you, too, eventually."

People who aren't eligible to vote themselves are also participating in the campaign, including Julio Beltran, a "Dreamer" from Texas, among the 800,000 who were brought to this country as children with their undocumented families and are now seeking legal status. Beltran, assistant director of the Office of Hispanic Ministry at the Diocese of Beaumont, said he got involved in the campaign as a young adult organizer to help "make the young people aware of the power they have and the responsibility they have as Catholics."

Beltran, who works with young people in his ministry, said young adults sometimes encounter an overwhelming amount of information about candidates and policies but not enough about how to actually register and fill out a ballot.