Nearly 60,000 Hidalgo County voters cast ballots in the Republican and Democratic primaries, resulting in a turnout of about 20 percent, according to election results from the state’s largest counties. The county’s percentage turnout was higher than the state average of 15.5 percent.
But that’s not unusual in Hidalgo County, a Democratic stronghold where campaigns contested in the primary almost always amount to the final result. Hidalgo County has equaled the state average for turnout in the past four primaries before voter participation fell off when the calendar turned to November.
The challenge moving forward will be taking lessons from the primaries and applying them to the general election, said Eliza Alvarado, the board president for the Advocacy Alliance Center of Texas, or AACT. The group — whose board members include McAllen businessman Alonzo Cantu, University of Texas-Pan American President Robert Nelsen and the county’s Democratic and Republican party chairs — launched an ambitious goal to reach 65 percent turnout in November’s presidential election.
Latinos voting.
However, discussion among the leaders of [The RGV Equal Voice Network] also turned to a bigger picture - how its efforts to empower Latino communities is part of a national movement.
“There is a huge shift going on across America that you do not see when you are this close to the action,” said Mike Seifert, network weaver for Equal Voice in the Valley. “It is not just the Rio Grande Valley. People talk about the sleeping Hispanic giant. We are coming into a very historic moment when it comes to Latino voting.”
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