About 11 million Hispanics voted in the 2012 presidential election, fewer than half of those who were eligible. Activists in both major political parties have been trying to increase that number, through voter registration drives and appeals over issues like immigration and wage stagnation on the left, and economic freedom on the right.
Now, so is Univision.
The company, including its top-rated Spanish-language network and many subsidiaries, is making an ambitious nationwide effort aimed at registering about three million new Latino voters this year, roughly the same number who have come of voting age since 2012.
The initiative will entail an aggressive schedule of advertisements on all of Univision’s video and digital platforms, including 126 local television and radio stations and the sports channel Univision Deportes. Station managers will exhort their audiences in old-fashioned editorials, a comprehensive online voter guide will be updated throughout the election season, and the media company will use the kinds of grass-roots organizing events usually staged by candidates — town-hall-style forums and telephone banks — to try to turn its viewers into even more of a powerhouse voting bloc than it already is.
The rule is no one can make it to the White House without the Hispanic vote,” said Jorge Ramos, the network’s news anchor. “That’s why Latino registration is incredibly important. Just a few votes in Nevada, Florida and Colorado could make or break any candidate.”
One of the network’s youngest telenovela stars, William Valdés, 22, will chronicle his becoming a citizen and registering to vote in a video and on social media.
And this summer, Univision will hold voter drives near the stadiums hosting the Copa América soccer tournament, and run public-service announcements during its broadcasts of those matches, which are expected to reach millions.
The effort extends to all of Univision’s digital properties, including Fusion, its digital platform that is intended to engage a millennial audience. It has also enlisted The Root, a digital property dedicated to African-American issues, in what Univision calls a “multicultural effort.”
For Univision, the voter drive on all cylinders sums up what sets it apart from the nation’s biggest English-language television networks, whose ratings it has frequently surpassed in recent years. Its mission is not only to inform and entertain, but also to “empower the Hispanic community.” And as that community shares a language but not necessarily an ethnicity or national origin, empowerment means serving as a unifying voice and a mobilizing, galvanizing force.
Roberto Llamas, the network’s executive vice president, said that with the election fast approaching, “We just kind of told ourselves, if our population is on the move, then it’s more important than ever for us to participate at rates higher than we have.”
Yet for a network frequently accused of Democratic-leaning advocacy, owned in part by Haim Saban, one of Hillary Clinton’s top financial backers — and whose anchor, Mr. Ramos, has had contentious run-ins with the Republican front-runner, Donald J. Trump — talk of throwing its weight around in politics may raise questions about whether the initiative is really a Democratic voter-mobilization effort in disguise.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/23/us/politics/univision-hispanic-voting.html?ref=topics
The subterfuge
