In Las Vegas County, one fifth of registered voters are inactive with invalid addresses. The city of Las Vegas had some of the most foreclosures in the whole country from 2009 to 2011, and residents continue to be forced from their homes.
Now here’s a crazy scenario: Las Vegas is 32 percent Latino, and Latinos make up more than a quarter of Nevada’s population, higher than all but four other states.
That means there’s a lot at stake in terms of voter turnout for the upcoming Nevada Primary.
There is nothing wrong with those statistics, but now for the crazy part: Nevada was hard hit by the financial crisis of 2008, which disproportionately affected minority homeowners, kicked out of their homes by banks when they could no longer afford their mortgage payments. According to an article on telesurtv.com, “that means many voters now have new addresses, phone numbers and other data essential for campaigning but the campaigns of Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton are struggling to find that information.”
Hard to reach
So the clock is ticking but campaign volunteers for Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders who would normally find themselves on the pavement and on the phone and anywhere else that volunteers are hankering to connect with voters are literally feeling the heat.
According to a Reuters news article, “both campaigns have reported that the high number of foreclosures in Nevada has slowed down canvassing and increased their workload as they try to correct their outdated data, taking away volunteers from other efforts.”
In Las Vegas County, one fifth of registered voters are inactive with invalid addresses.
The city of Las Vegas had some of the most foreclosures in the whole country from 2009 to 2011, and residents continue to be forced from their homes.
Anybody home?
Reuters goes on to say that “with the foreclosed homes often switching hands multiple times – from homeowner to bank to investor and back to another homeowner in just a few years – keeping up with voters who at some point lived in those homes is difficult.”
In fact, campaign managers for both candidates comment that “data that might have been corrected in the 2012 general election has, in many cases, already fallen out of date again because the Nevada housing market has continued to see wave after wave of foreclosures.”
Consider this: In Clark County, where Las Vegas is located, a fifth of the 1 million voters registered, are tagged as inactive.
The importance of connecting with voters can’t be underestimated. In the waning days before the Nevada Primary, finding exactly where those voters are is more important than ever.
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