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Not all Hartford Latinos will vote but they agree on food assistance
Oct 21, 2024
Dumont is a freelance journalist based in Connecticut.
The Fulcrum presents We the People, a series elevating the voices and visibility of the persons most affected by the decisions of elected officials. In this installment, we explore the motivations of over 36 million eligible Latino voters as they prepare to make their voices heard in November.
Many residents living in the Frog Hollow neighborhood of Hartford, Conn., are hesitant to vote, despite being passionate and in tune with local social issues, due to historical distrust. Among those voting and not voting, food insecurity and inflation at large are a key issue for many Latino residents.
At the heart of Frog Hollow, Natalie Morales stays busy as a patient navigator at the Hispanic Health Council's Family Wellness Center on 590 Park Street. She spends her days helping people find open food pantries, apply to state assistance programs, fill out housing applications and secure employment.
As a working mother, Morales said, her own paychecks go directly to paying bills. Whatever she has left over is her budget for groceries. With increasing prices, high-quality foods and fresh produce don’t always make that budget.
“Sometimes, I don’t have enough to go out and buy $200-$300 worth of food,” she explained. “There are times that I do have to go to food pantries because it’s not enough.”
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Even then, like many working parents, Morales said she cannot always make it to a food pantry since they have limited hours and she has a busy schedule.
“Inflation with food is very high. … Yes, we have food pantries but some are not every day,” said Morales. She knows families who depend on food pantries on a regular basis and pointed out that pantries offer more non-perishable foods rather than meats, proteins and produce that contain essential nutrients.
In 2023, about 30 percent of Hartford residents said they experienced food insecurity — more than half of these individuals identified as Latino and/or Black — compared to the statewide average of 14 percent, according toDataHaven’s annual Hartford Equity Profile.
Passionate about social issues in her local community, Morales said she supports the council’s work on civic engagement — however, she does not plan on casting a ballot this fall. Morales said she has not voted in many years and has not seen a difference when she does or does not vote.
At a food distribution event in September, Hartford resident Melanie Segui echoed Morales, saying inflation has impacted her this past year but she does not plan on voting. “I just let others choose,” she said.
In the 2020 presidential election, about 50 percent of Hartford’s eligible voters cast ballots — compared to the state average of 80 percent. During the 2022 election, 26 percent of Hartford residents voted, with the state average being 58 percent.
A historical distrust between residents and political processes continues to be a major challenge in the community, said Megan Scharrer, policy advocacy manager of the Hispanic Health Council. In response, the council has partnered with local, community-serving organizations to host two listening sessions on how to best civically inform and motivate potential voters in the area.
Through these community discussions, Scharrer learned that residents prefer to learn about the voting process through in-person conversations with other members of the community. In response, the council has organized a team of about 20 volunteers who conduct door-to-door canvassing in various Hartford neighborhoods to reach potential voters.
Scharrer shared that food insecurity is a top concern for local residents — voters and non-voters alike — along with affordable housing, quality health care access, community safety and protecting workers’ rights.
“Access to food … that’s a really big thing, access to actually healthy food in the neighborhood,” said Scharrer.
Although there are Frog Hollow residents who are hesitant to vote, this community is not a monolith and those who are voting seem confident in their decision.
On a sunny Saturday in October, seven volunteers reached out to around 200 households in the Frog Hollow community. Scharrer shared that residents were overall receptive to speaking about Election Day, and many had questions about voting registration and early voting — although there were residents who felt as if their vote doesn’t matter,
While some residents said they feel as if their vote doesn’t matter, others expressed great excitement for the elections, said Scharrer.
Hartford resident Pedro Pimienta is ready to cast his ballot in November. He has watched his community adapt to the highs and lows of the local economy since emigrating from Colombia 60 years ago and said that recent inflation will strongly influence his vote.
“We got to be careful this time,” said Pimienta. “We have to [be] cautious when we vote because it’s our future.”
Although Pimienta receives Social Security and pension benefits, he said it’s not enough to cover all his expenses. In the past few years, inflation has impacted many aspects of Pimienta’s life, including the cost of groceries, insurance, home electricity and his mortgage — which has gone up from $700 last year to $1200 this year.
“Right now, the cost of living for me is very high,” shared Pimienta. “Every month, when I pay all my bills, I don’t have enough money for food. Every time I go to the supermarket, I think, ‘Oh, they made a mistake’ and they say, ‘No, everything is correct.’ … I remember I used to buy a rotisserie chicken for $5.99 and now it’s $10.99.”
Residents have emphasized how the qualifications for assistance programs, like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, are specific and exclusionary. For those who do receive SNAP benefits, the amount given is not enough at times due to inflation.
A few residents, who are eligible, have commented that the amount given is not enough at times since SNAP benefits are not increasing at the same rate as inflation.
“Food is very, very expensive,” said Morales. “Even when a person gets food stamps from the state it’s still hard because if … that’s all you get, you have to know how to manage your money to buy the food that you need.”
About 37 percent of Frog Hollow households were participating in SNAP in 2022, according to the Census Bureau, while 10.6 percent of households experiencing poverty were not receiving SNAP benefits.
With these issues in mind, community organizations are continuing their civic engagement efforts this fall with nonpartisan, door-to-door canvassing and informational events with the hopes of increasing voter turnouts and civic participation year-round.
“We’ve definitely tried to also teach people that it doesn’t just stop at voting,” said Scharrer. “There are ways to get civically involved and that’s our goal, making civic engagement a part of everyday life.”
In the weeks leading to Election Day,The Fulcrum will continue to publish stories from across the country featuring the people who make up the powerful Latino electorate to better understand the hopes and concerns of an often misunderstood, diverse community.
What do you think about this article? We’d like to hear from you. Please send your questions, comments, and ideas to newsroom@fulcrum.us.
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Recommended
Election integrity: How North Carolina ensures safe and secure voting
Oct 21, 2024
While elections work differently depending on where you live, all states have security measures to ensure the integrity of every vote. With that in mind, The Fulcrum presents a six-part series on how elections work in swing states. Created by Issue One, these state summaries focus on each state's election process from registration to certification.
Our freedom to vote in fair and secure elections is the foundation of our system of self-governance established under the U.S. Constitution. As citizens, we have a voice that many people around the world do not.
Because the majority of elections are run at a local level, the voting experience can be very different depending on where a voter lives, but all states, including North Carolina, have verification processes in place before, during, and after votes are cast to ensure the integrity of the election. Whether you cast your ballot in-person or by mail, early or on Election Day, your vote counts.
Here is what you need to know about how elections work in North Carolina to make sure that your vote is kept safe and secure and counted with integrity.
Registration
- To ensure their eligibility, all voters must register to vote in order to cast a ballot in North Carolina.
- The voter registration deadline in North Carolina is 5:00 PM on October 11, 2024.
- You can register online, by mail, or in-person.
- Learn more at: https://www.ncsbe.gov/registering/how-register
Ways to vote
Once registered, a voter can decide if they will vote in-person or through a mail-in absentee ballot. Both options have transparent processes to ensure ballots are kept secure and counted accurately.
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Vote by mail:
- Any North Carolina registered voter may request, receive, and vote a mail-in absentee ballot where absentee voting is permitted.
- The absentee ballot request deadline is October 29, 2024 and the ballot can be returned by close of polls on Election Day, Tuesday, November 5, 2024. https://www.ncsbe.gov/voting/vote-mail
Vote early in-person:
- Early voting starts October 17, 2024 and ends at 3:00 PM on November 2, 2024 the Saturday before Election Day. Voting occurs at early voting sites in each county.
- Voters must bring a valid photo ID to vote early in-person. See here for details: https://www.ncsbe.gov/voting/vote-early-person
Vote in-person on Election Day:
- Election Day is Tuesday, November 5, 2024. Polls are open from 6:30 AM to 7:30 PM.
- Voters must bring a valid photo ID to vote on Election Day. See here for details: https://www.ncsbe.gov/voting/ vote-person-election-day
- Find more information about voting on Election Day: https://georgia.gov/vote-in-person-election-day
There are also options for military and overseas voting, more information is available here: https://www.ncsbe. gov/voting/military-and-overseas-voting
Track your ballot: https://northcarolina.ballottrax.net/voter/
Securely counting every ballot during the voting period
Before, during, and after ballots are cast, North Carolina has procedures to review and verify election processes.
- 48 states conduct some type of post-election audit. North Carolina is one of 37 states that require a traditional post-election tabulation audit, involving auditable paper ballots.
- To ensure that every ballot is accurately counted, each voted ballot is inserted into a tabulator, and selections are also recorded on a media card in the tabulator.
- Absentee ballots may only be counted once the identity of the voter is verified. Absentee ballot counting is open to the public. Absentee ballots cannot be tabulated and results reported until Election Day.
- All voting equipment in the state must meet rigorous security standards that can be thoroughly audited.
- The state and county boards of elections also conduct audits after every election to be sure the voting process and equipment are secure, free, and fair.
Polls close and reporting begins
- Unofficial results start to be reported on the North Carolina elections website when polls close at 7:30 PM on Election Day. Counting absentee ballots may take extra time due to the signature verification process required to ensure the integrity of every vote. No reported results are considered final until the election is certified.
- See detailed information at: https://www.ncsbe.gov/results-data/election-results/election-night-reporting-timeline
- Be patient for results and know news media reports are only projections and not official.
Certifying the election
- The governing body conducting the election must meet to verify that the unofficial results reported in each precinct or election district were accurate. Final results are only declared after election officials go through steps to verify the count, checking for accuracy and resolving any error. During this process, known as canvassing, election officials count every eligible ballot cast, check for duplicates, verify voter status, and give voters a chance to rectify mistakes that might otherwise disqualify their ballot.
- In every county in North Carolina, county boards of election conduct a canvass meeting ten days after the elections, at 11:00 AM on November 15, 2024. This canvass meeting is open to the public.
- The state board of elections conducts its canvass meeting at 11:00 AM on November 25.
- Recounts (NOTE: see https://www.ncsbe.gov/news/press-releases/2024/06/17/public-comment-period-set- proposed-changes-rules-about-election-protests-and-recounts)
Meeting of the Electoral College
- North Carolina’s slate of electors meet on December 17, 2024 to send their certified votes for president and vice president to Congress.
Resources
For more information on how elections operate in North Carolina, visit the State Board of Elections: https://www.ncsbe.gov/about-elections
For additional national and other state-by-state information, go to https://www.howelectionswork.org/
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'Election Countdown,' with guest Andrew Heaton
Oct 21, 2024
After a 14-year career as an Emmy-winning reporter, Scott Klug upset a 32-year Democratic members of Congress from Wisconsin. Despite winning his four elections by an average of 63 percent. he stayed true to his term limit pledge and retired.
During his time in Congress, Klug had the third most independent voting record of any Wisconsin lawmaker in the last 50 years. In September 2023, he launched a podcast, “Lost in the Middle,” to shine a spotlight on the oft ignored political center.
The Fulcrum has covered several of Klug’s podcasts about America’s “political orphans,” highlighting what he describes as 71 million bewildered, frustrated voters.
“The podcast was born,” Klug told Madison Magazine, “out of the sentiment that a wide swath of the American public, myself included, can’t figure out how in the hell we got to this place. And more importantly, is there a way for us out of it.”
And now with the election only a few weeks away, Klug and The Fulcrum present a series of podcasts titled “Election Countdown.”
Today we offer the first episode as political podcaster and comedian Andrew Heaton files his observations from a phone booth in Edinburgh. He’s the host of “The Orphanage” podcast, where some of Klug’s political orphans happily live.
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The mission of “Lost in the Middle” is serious — finding a way to something resembling common ground as a country — but it’s not solemn.
“I’m having fun,” Klug said. “I spent 14 years on TV. It’s telling stories. Getting out there and talking to people. Aside from my personal commitment to the issue, it’s just a lot of fun. I enjoy listening to people and telling stories.”
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By using military against ‘enemy within,’ Trump would end democracy
Oct 18, 2024
Sarat is the William Nelson Cromwell professor of jurisprudence and political science at Amherst College.
As the 2024 presidential election enters its final phase, Donald Trump has gone full bore in following the frightening playbook of wannabe dictators. He also plans to dust off old laws that will allow him to carry out his anti-immigrant crusade and use the American military against people he calls the “enemy within.”
At a rally in Aurora, Colo., on Oct. 11, the former president promised to be America’s protector. He said that “upon taking office we will have an Operation Aurora at the federal level” and undertake a mass removal of illegal immigrants.
Even as he has ramped up his chilling threats, his poll numbers have been rising. Parts of his message seem to be resonating with voters.
To take one example, polls now show that “More than half of all Americans, including a quarter of Democrats, support the mass deportation of immigrants who are living in the country illegally.” Public support for such a draconian policy has increased by 11 percent since 2021.
Last May, Trump made clear that he would “have no problem using the military, per se,” to deport millions of people. He now openly acknowledges that mass deportations would be “a bloody story.”
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The former president contends that laws meant to prevent the use of the military against civilians inside the United States would not be applicable if he ordered the military to round up migrants. “These aren’t civilians,” Trump argues. “These are people that aren’t legally in our country. This is an invasion of our country.”
With three weeks left in the presidential campaign, and as Trump reiterates his plan to use the military against civilians and his political opponents, retired generals who served in the Trump administration need to step out of the shadows. People like James Mattis (Trump’s first secretary of defense), John Kelly (who served as chief of staff) and Mark Milley (chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) must come forward and remind voters about what they have said about the threat Trump poses to American democracy and the freedom that Americans now enjoy.
In the meantime, what Trump said in Aurora cannot be dismissed as an off-the-cuff remark. Reading from his teleprompter, Trump promised that as soon as he got back to the Oval Office he would invoke “the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 … to target every migrant criminal network operating on American soil” and expedite their removal.
The way that act has been used in the past is a stain on our history.
As the Brennan Center for Justice observes, “The Alien Enemies Act of 1798 is a wartime authority that allows the president to detain or deport the natives and citizens of an enemy nation.” The act refers specifically to “invasions,” which may explain why Trump regularly refers to the influx of illegal immigrants into this country in those terms.
The law “permits the president to target these immigrants without a hearing and based only on their country of birth or citizenship … it can be — and has been — wielded against immigrants who have done nothing wrong, have evinced no signs of disloyalty, and are lawfully present in the United States.”
No wonder Trump can’t wait to get his hands on it.
If he does, he will follow in the footsteps of President Woodrow Wilson, who invoked it during World War I to target people from Germany living in the United States. The act also provided the legal basis for the infamous internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.
Wilson continued to use the act after the war ended, a precedent followed by President Harry Truman, who relied on it for authority to continue the internment and deportations started under Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The Supreme Court upheld the Truman administration’s extended reliance on the Alien Enemies Act.
Can anyone imagine that the court’s current MAGA majority would do anything different?
Trump’s speech at Aurora didn’t stop with his remarks about the Alien Enemies Act. He went on to offer some thoughts about the role of the military if he is reelected.
“We have,” Trump told a cheering audience, “the greatest military in the world, but you have to know how to use them. It’s the enemy from within. All the scum that we have to deal with that hate our country. That’s a bigger enemy than China and Russia!”
On Sunday, he reprised the “enemy from within” line in a Fox News interview.
In response to a question about whether he was worried about violence on Election Day, the former president quickly pivoted to his usual anti-immigrant riff. “I think,” Trump insisted, “the bigger problem is the enemy from within, not even the people that have come in and destroying our country and by the way, totally destroying our country. … I think the bigger problem are the people from within.”
Leaving nothing to the imagination Trump went on to say, “We have some very bad people. We have some sick people, radical left lunatics. It should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard or, if really necessary, by the military.”
Though he did not say it to Fox, the former president plans, as the Brennan Center reports, “to invoke the Insurrection Act, which allows the president to use the military as a domestic police force, on his first day in office.“ Like the Alien Enemies Act, the Insurrection Act has a long history.
It was first enacted in 1792 and does not define what counts as “insurrection” and “rebellion.” The Insurrection Act was kept on the books a century later when Congress prohibited “the president from using federal troops to enforce civilian law under most circumstances.”
Stirring up fear of internal enemies and radical leftists also has a long history. That history offers a troubling warning about Trump’s musings about what he will do to people he considers “very bad.”
That prospect underlines the urgency of the present moment. If Trump wins on Nov. 5, we would be left with freedom for those who do not offend the powerful, and repression — enforced by the military — for everyone else.
Is that the future that people who spent their lives wearing the uniform of our country want for themselves or the branches of the armed forces that they led? If it is not, then Mattis, Kelly and Milley need to speak out loudly and repeatedly.
Recall that in 2020, Mattis denounced Trump’s plan to use the military against protesters after the murder of George Floyd. He warned that doing so would “erode … the moral ground that ensures a trusted bond between men and women in uniform and the society they are sworn to protect, and of which they themselves are a part.”
He said that Trump’s behavior in office made a “mockery of our Constitution.”
In 2023, Kelly went on the record to describe the former president as “A person that has no idea what America stands for and has no idea what America is all about. … A person who admires autocrats and murderous dictators. A person that has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution and the rule of law.”
And just this year, Milley apparently told The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward that Trump is a “fascist to the core” and “the most dangerous person to this country.”
Those retired military leaders, all of whom have served their country so well, can do so again by going on television and using social media every day to remind moderates and undecided voters of their warnings about Trump. There is no time to waste.
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