Just as rural communities in America are not a monolith, neither are rural voters. And in many counties throughout the heartland, the growth of immigrant populations has played a vital role in slowing the overall trend toward population loss. Large rural states such as Wyoming, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, and Oregon have all seen growth in Latinx populations in the last decade.
In Iowa, the Latinx population is the largest minority group in the state, but lawmakers voted to make English the state’s official language in 2002. For that reason, the state hasn’t made translating voter material into other languages a priority.
As a result, Get Out The Vote organizations have taken up the effort—translating voting instructions and candidate information and sharing it by phone and texts to reach people where they’re at.
“It has been a lot of people who don’t know how to register to vote, who need material in Spanish,” Ortiz said. “I’m able to be there and give them all this information.”
Although Biden came in fourth in the Iowa primaries, many Democratic voting advocates are less focused on generating excitement around Biden as a candidate than they are taking advantage of a strong desire among many voters on the left and in the center to see Donald Trump defeated.
“After the caucuses, I feel like there was definitely a consensus that we need to rally together to defeat Donald Trump,” said Jeanina Messerly, a district field director for the Progressive Turnout Project, a PAC working to drive Democratic voter turnout with field offices across the U.S. “So much has happened, the caucuses kind of feel like they were five years ago, but Biden really understands the importance of reaching rural communities. He has a platform to uplift all working people. I feel like people see that and they’re excited to be voting Donald Trump out, to be quite frank.”
