Unsung Heroes of Election

The Nov. 7 story “Latino Vote Tipped Scales in Oxnard Race” was slightly off-base with the claim that this year’s volunteer get-out-the-vote effort produced “no net gain” in voters over the 1988 election.

I have worked on grass-roots voter turnout efforts in Oxnard’s La Colonia and Rose Park precincts in six general elections since 1978, including the 1988 and 1990 elections. In 1988, a total of 1,271 persons (including absentee voters) voted in those two precincts. This year, 1,255 went to the polls to cast ballots on Election Day--but another 103 took out absentee ballots, for a total of 1,358 voters. This represents an increase in voter turnout of 6.85% over the last presidential election--higher than the nationwide increase of 5%.

This is all the more remarkable when one considers the highly transient nature of these two precincts and the growing percentage of non-citizen immigrants in the La Colonia and Rose Park neighborhoods.

If one examines the results for the entire group of five heavily Latino precincts targeted for voter turnout by a grass-roots coalition that included El Concilio, similar results are evident. Total turnout (including absentee voters) went from 2,889 in 1988 to 3,097 in 1992 (a 7.2% increase).

And Dr. Manuel Lopez’s margin of victory over Mike Plisky in these five precincts combined went from 201 in the 1990 City Council race (when Plisky actually beat Lopez in two of the five precincts) to 855 in this year’s mayoral contest, when Lopez carried all five by solid margins.

Credit for the increased voter turnout, in the face of difficult demographic trends, must be extended to all the groups, campaigns and volunteers who participate year after year in the unsung and unglamorous task of promoting voter turnout. I thank The Times for showcasing some of the people who selflessly reach out to their neighbors in our increasingly disconnected society.

KARL LAWSON

Oxnard