For several days until the Preliminary Election, all or almost all radio programs in Spanish included messages from candidates. Some of them were interviewed by the producers of these programs. Some candidates who do not speak Spanish managed, using interpreters to send their message to the public.
In the past, when Latin American candidates were scarce, the message of many was “vote Hispanic” as they wanted to see our own in positions of power. The goal was to eliminate non-Latinos, “because they don’t work for the community,” they said, but then thousands didn’t get out voting to achieve that goal.
Time has passed and the inevitable has happened. We are so many now, that only two districts have both, Latino and non Latinos as candidates; the remaining four have two Latin American candidates per district. But now, we don’t go out to vote, either.
It is common knowledge that preliminary elections are as important or more than the finals, as the few of us who exercise our constitutional rights in the preliminary elections, impose our candidates on them in the finals.
This is the case of the outcome in the elections for councilors at-Large when the Department of Elections distributed forms with preliminary results where one of the candidates appeared as a winner by only one vote difference. By counting several ballots that had not been included in the original count, all candidates received extra votes, resulting in a change of the totals and the loser became the winner with the opportunity to have his name placed on the November ballot.
It’s amazing that in a city that has 37,998 registered voters, only 3,539 or 9.31% decided to vote, perhaps if more had done so, the results would have been different.
Anyway, our congratulations to all winners and losers for having the courage to participate.
