AURORA | Eight canvassers set off from the Village Exchange Center in north Aurora Monday hoping to make a final lasting effort on voters who aren’t expected to turnout this year.
“Today is people who don’t vote,” said Victor Galvan, the director of membership and engagement for the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition.
CIRC, a statewide organization, has made a major emphasis in Aurora, where nearly 1 in 5 residents are foreign born. The organization itself doesn’t endorse candidates, but it has a separate endorsement arm, CIRC Action Fund, that has.
The group says it’s talked with more than 3,500 potential voters and made 50,000 attempts between Adams and Arapahoe counties at contacting “new American and people of color voters who might not otherwise participate in the midterm elections.”
Galvan said they really just want people at the polls.
Monday, CIRC expected to reach around 100 more people. Those people, Galvan said, are people who’ve only voted once in the last four even-year elections.
“These are folks parties don’t invest in, campaigns don’t invest in and special interest groups don’t invest in,” he said, as the canvassers were getting ready to head out to surrounding neighborhoods.
Galvan said the people they were after that day aren’t likely a priority for others because of one reason or another — they’re always moving or campaigns don’t think they care about the issues.
“But for me, I think the opposite,” he said. “It’s not their fault they aren’t voting.”
Galvan said it could be that these voters work more than one job and can’t find the time to drop off a ballot.
Tuesday CIRC plans to get as many ballots turned in and people to the polls as they can with a van. They’ll be making stops at mosques, churches, non-profit organizations and homeless centers throughout Aurora.
Kate Deshiell, one of the eight knocking on doors Monday, said she heard a lot about immigration issues while out canvassing since she started volunteering with CIRC in August.
“It’s an incredible opportunity to be in a community with immigrants and not enough people understand that,” Deshiell said.
That’s also what Galvan said he hopes to convey this election.
“These are people who have, for a long time, been silenced,” he said of immigrant and Latino voters. “My job at CIRC is to build power. And part of that is helping legislators understand these voters are active.”
Galvan said he tells people there is strength in numbers and that showing up and voting is how they will get attention.
“If we can make a 3 percent impact, we can show the power of this community,” he said.