From trailer parks to night clubs, this NC group is on a mission to get out the Latino vote

It’s 86 degrees and the hottest time of day when Jackie Ramirez and her newly formed team pull into the “Tienda Y Taqueria Los Rdrgz” parking lot in Smithfield, a small town in Johnston County North Carolina.

This area is Ramirez’s home county, but it’s also her field office.

She heads into a trailer park called “Los Durangos," referring to the state in Mexico where she said most of the Latinos who live there immigrated from, with her small team in matching bright blue T-shirts to register eligible Latino voters.

Most times when they knock, no one answers the door, even when they can hear rustling and voices inside. Other times, someone answers but they are ineligible because of their documentation status.

Often, though, people are simply uninterested in voting. This is when Ramirez gets fired up, and she starts to make a pitch.

“Are you being treated badly at work?” she asks. “Don't get breaks? Don't get paid properly?”

“For that exact reason, that’s why we’re registering our people to vote,” Ramirez said. “Worker laws in North Carolina are already really weak and affect our community the most with situations like that happen. So would you want to register and maybe vote for somebody that will change our labor laws and minimum wage?”

In an area where some Latinos are undocumented, Ramirez is looking for the 'minority within the minority' of people who are eligible and interested. It’s a lot of work, under the hot sun, for a relatively small number of registrations.

“Sometimes we’ll get one voter registration in the whole shift, and that’s a win,” Ramirez said.

North Carolina Latinos may not be known for their importance in elections like they are in Arizona, Nevada and California, but Ramirez and her team are putting boots on the ground to connect with this growing, and harder-to-reach, group of Latinos.

After graduating from the University of North Carolina - Greensboro, Ramirez returned to her hometown to canvass and increase political engagement with Siembra NC, a nonprofit working toward political and economic justice for Latinos.

Her work is hinged on the Tar Heel State’s rapid growth of a Hispanic population that now totals more than 1.1 million residents, compared to about 800,000 in 2010, according to census data.

Although the total population of Latino residents is highest in urban areas, rural spots have had rapid growth in recent years and contain higher percentages of Latinos to other groups, according to Carolina Demography.

In fact, the county Ramirez focuses on, Johnston County, “had the fourth highest Hispanic population share (16%) followed by Durham (15%),” in 2020, according to a Carolina Demography report.

To reach this particular group, she visits trailer parks, grocery stores, flea markets, community colleges, outdoor concerts and has even stood outside of the local night club to find eligible Latino voters.

Her time is mostly spent in Johnston County, but sometimes her team also works in neighboring Wilson, Wayne and Harnett counties.

More: Younger voters can influence North Carolina elections. What do they care about?

Promoting political engagement amid apathy

Despite Hispanic voters making up a larger percentage of the North Carolina voter bloc now than they did 20 years ago in 2004 by about 3.8 percentage points, voter turnout tends to be low.

Across the state, 27.5% of non-Hispanic voters cast ballots in the 2024 primary election, whereas Hispanic voters turned out at 7.6%.

Siembra canvassing volunteers encounter this sentiment daily. When Maria Franco, a 22-year-old public safety aide in Johnston County and Siembra volunteer, registered Cristofer Garcia, a 22-year-old who lives and works in Smithfield, outside a local grocery store he was largely uninterested in politics despite agreeing to register.

He said his plan was to vote in November only if he found a particular candidate he was passionate about.

Franco said many young people are apathetic to politics. She feels that if they don’t make an active effort to change that, it could have lasting impacts on their community and later generations.

Ramirez echoed Franco’s sentiment adding that she commits to re-visiting that type of voter closer to Election Day to keep encouraging them to make their voice heard at the polls.

The goal, aside from registering voters ahead of the 2024 presidential election, is to get Latinos involved in local and state politics. Ramirez said she reminds voters that state elected officials, like the North Carolina commissioner of labor, have an impact on working conditions in North Carolina -- an area Latino voters tend to have a large stake in.

Salvador Fonseca, 31, who now works full-time for Siembra, said his upbringing keeps him going despite the apathy and rejections.

He talked about his fear growing up that any time his parents went into public with him, they risked being deported.

“My own experiences as a kid having to worry about my parents driving me to school, something simple,” Fonseca said. “Even not being able to participate in sports at a young age because that would risk my parents to do an extra outing. Always being in the back of your mind not knowing ‘Am I the reason why they could face a deportation?’”

Long days and rejections are nothing compared to that, he said.

Barriers to registering and political involvement

In North Carolina, there are around 290,000 registered Hispanic voters, but Nikki MarÍn Baena, co-director of Siembra NC, hopes to register an additional 3,000 to 5,000 more Latino voters across North Carolina this year. Ramirez has registered around 260 Latinos in the Johnston County area since January and Siembra has registered just over 1,000 statewide.

Recently, Ramirez said it’s gotten harder to register voters because of the state’s voter registration rules, which require a driver's license number or four digits of their social security number.

“Since we have that minority of undocumented people within our whole minority, [parents of eligible young Latino voters are] so protective of their children’s socials,” Ramirez said.

Election integrity in NC: Will photo ID requirements help or hurt voter access?

Marín Baena said another part of the puzzle lies in a lack of tradition in families of voting.

“In North Carolina, our voting population is pretty new to voting in general either because they did not vote back in their home country or because they’re just really young and no one in their family votes,” she said.

Despite the challenges, Ramirez feels committed to the cause, partially because of the sacrifices her family made for her to live and thrive in this state.

My parents “were OK with their struggle as long as it meant for me that I could do something to help the community or just make a change in this world,” she said.

This article originally appeared on Wilmington StarNews: Registering Latino voters in North Carolina a priority for Siembra NC