Latinos should not vote says political ad

A friend of mine wrote to me:

From the news–perhaps a good blog topic for you would be the political ad directed at Latinos, urging them NOT to vote.  Have you heard or seen this ad?

Unfortunately, I have heard of this ad. It was originally put out in Nevada by a GOP-linked group. Already Univisión has refused to run the ad and several Latino organizations have condemned it, as they should. Latinos for Reform is the group and they were also active in the 2008 election, claiming that a vote for President Obama was a vote for the suppression of Latinos by African-Americans. The text for that ad from 2008 read:

Barack Obama a friend of the Latino community? The record demonstrates the opposite. Did you know that after the 2000 census that showed a tremendous growth of Latinos in Chicago, Obama told reporters in Chicago that while everyone agrees that the Hispanic population has grown, they cannot expand by taking power from the African-American community. You heard right…but there’s more. Did you know that Obama has never hired a Latino to a senior position in his office throughout his legislative career? Did you know that Obama has opposed trade with Mexico, Central America and Colombia, yet supports free trade with Africa?

To give you an idea of how bad their ad is, let me quote from an article in the October 19 online issue of Right Wing News. Even they had problems with the ad:

So have you heard? There’s a group called Latinos for Reform urging Hispanic voters not to vote in Nevada because the Democrats lied about amnesty. … The Left is painting these guys as a bunch of Bushies trying to suppress the Latino vote — and they do have some strong Republican connections. However, I’d also note that they seem to legitimately be pro-amnesty. …

In other words, this sounds like a pro-illegal immigration Republican group.

Now, should they be running this ad? It would be tempting to say “yes” because I believe we’d be better off if less people voted in this country. Every year, our elections end up being decided by people who don’t know who the Vice-President is or which party is pro-life. So, if a lot less people voted in this country, we’d all probably be better off.

That being said, encouraging minorities not to vote comes across as sleazy and reminds people of the bad old days in the South, when they came up with all sorts of techniques to discourage blacks from voting. It’s really not something Republican allied groups should be involved in, particularly since Democrats often falsely accuse Republicans of suppressing the minority vote by trying to weed out election fraud.

Even going beyond that, I reject the idea that Republican Hispanic groups should be trying to use amnesty as a carrot to appeal to Hispanic voters. Instead, they should be out there explaining why the people who are hurt worst by amnesty often tend to be law abiding, patriotic Hispanic Americans — and that’s absolutely true by the way.

So, count me as someone who’s not a fan of these ads.

The Right Wing News has it correct. All of us have groups or people or neighbors in our minds that make us shudder when we think of them casting their votes. But, to not encourage voting is not appropriate. And, particularly when we think of encouraging minorities to not vote, the Right Wing News hit the nail on the head, “encouraging minorities not to vote comes across as sleazy and reminds people of the bad old days in the South …”

What all of us need to do it to encourage people to become informed voters, whether or not we like their politics. Voting boycotts do not work, either in this country or in other countries. They only allow for people with whom you disagree to be elected. There is actually a chapter of that being argued in the Book of Judges. OK, how many of you can find an election in the Book of Judges, in which a person warned the populace that to not get involved in the election would allow the “brambles” to win?