Absentee Ballots: Bringing Out Hispanic Votes?

Since 2008, . In 2009, a Hyattsville councilmember was able to take advantage of this with the Hispanic community.

“Matter of fact, that was probably the way I won that election,” said

Lizanne won his council seat by 20 votes, with half of his 82 votes being absentee ballot. His 41 absentee votes were 34 percent of the 121 total absentee votes for all five Wards in 2009. The only candidate with an absentee number even close to Lizanne was

who is running in May’s elections, said she has tried the same strategy with the Hispanic community and received little to no response. In her experience, she has not seen a lot of Latino involvement in elections. Lizanne confirmed this, saying that

“I feel personally, because of Mr. Lizanne being able to communicate better with [the Hispanic community] and knowing they didn’t have to go out, and I’m assuming, that he may have appealed to them,” said Perry.

There is no telling how many of Lizanne’s absentee votes were from Hispanics. Lizanne said they came from a number of groups including Hispanics, Africans, African-Americans and White-Americans.

said he is suspicious of Lizanne’s victory.

“When you have a huge number of absentee ballots, there needs to be some reasonable explanation for that, and inconvenience is not a reasonable explanation in my opinion,” Marshall said.

Lizanne pointed to a tight work schedule as an explanation for some.

“Our population works night and day, and sometimes they don’t have time for voting,” Lizanne said. “When they have this opportunity, they really take advantage of that.”

Lizanne, who used to own an international grocery store in Hyattsville called El Compadre, said it’s doubtful that he will run in 2013, but that there’s always a possibility. In 2009, he wasn’t going to run until he saw that his potential opponent presented “very conservative ideas.”

“Of course, if I run, I intend to use every legal way to win the race,” Lizanne said.

Marshall said he is worried about the influence a candidate could have on a non-English speaking population.

“When you have a candidate whose base for voters is potentially non-English speaking, absentee ballots may be guided by the candidate one way or another,” he said. “That would, in my opinion, skew the voters’ independence of making up their own mind.”

Kim Propeack, an advocacy group for low-income Latinos in the area, said this kind of attitude dates back to anti-immigrant fervor of the early 1900s.

“Unfortunately, isolationists and xenophobes in the United States have a long history of implying that immigrant legislators control voting populations through electoral tricks,” Propeack said. “Absentee voting is a methodology to insure that overworked communities can actually engage in the political process.” 

Maryland is one of 30 states that allow “no-excuse” absentee ballots. After a 2008 referendum, the state constitution was amended to allow the change. April 30 is Hyattsville’s ballot drop-off day. If you are a registered voter, you can apply, receive your absentee ballot and cast your vote all in the same day.

When asked if he thought he would have been able to win the election without “no-excuse” absentee ballots, Lizanne said, “Yes.”

He attributed this confidence to a strong base of supporters that has accumulated over his 30 years of living in Hyattsville. He acknowledged that the “no-excuse” option appealed to those who were disinclined or unable to go out and vote, but he believes, even without the option, supporters would have still shown up.