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Woman uses a caravan to get the vote out in Rochester's Latino community
Sarah Taddeo
Rochester Democrat and Chronicle
If residents in Rochester's north-central neighborhoods forgot that Tuesday was Election Day, Mercedes Vasquez-Simmons reminded them.
Anyone near Hudson and North Clinton avenues, Norton Street and places in between in recent weeks probably heard her voice through a bullhorn, rising above the staccato sound of her car horn and the music pumping from a speaker in her backseat.
"Your vote is your voice!" she said out her car window Tuesday evening, firmly and confidently. "Let it be heard!"
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She drove around to several housing complexes, slow-rolling through the parking lots as residents peered at her through the windows. Vasquez-Simmons waved. She pointed at pedestrians on the sidewalks — "Have you voted?" she asked.
Vasquez-Simmons, 51, a Rochester resident and business owner, has been doing this twice a day for two weeks. Tuesday's 5:30 p.m. caravan, including her car and another behind it with Puerto Rican flags attached to the roof and windows, was her last drive before the polls close.
She targeted neighborhoods with high Latino populations because she's passionate about voter engagement in her community, Vasquez-Simmons said.
"Our goal is to make sure they're reminded to come out and vote," she said. "We just weren't getting the results at the polls with early voting."
So she pulled out a traditional Puerto Rican advertisement tool. Car caravans, complete with music and speakers, are often used by businesses or politicians for exposure, or to reach people in remote areas of the island, she said.
"We would do it by putting a speaker on the cars and getting that message out to the neighborhoods," she said. "(In Rochester,) we get out twice a day, getting the word out to the Latino population, and just a reminder that, 'Hey, you know what, you have a right, and let's exercise that right in one of the biggest elections.'"
Getting the message out
Ellia Vara, 28, of Rochester drove the car with the flags, following Vasquez-Simmons as she wound through the streets. She is a representative of the Puerto Rican Independence Party.
It's important to get this message out to the Puerto Rican population in Rochester, Vara said in Spanish, with Vasquez-Simmons translating. Donald Trump doesn't have Puerto Ricans' best interests at heart, she said, and she's hoping Latino voters, along with others, can select a candidate who does.
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Vasquez-Simmons is particularly fired up about this topic after a neighborhood voting snafu during June's primary election.
A polling place that is typically located at Los Flamboyanes, a facility off North Clinton Avenue that's home to many Latino senior citizens, was moved elsewhere for the primary. Residents and others in the voting district, including Vasquez-Simmons' mother, were unaware of the change, leaving them scrambling to find transportation to another polling location, said Vasquez-Simmons.
Once they arrived at the new location, some were handed the wrong ballots and thus couldn't vote for specific candidates, she said.
Vasquez-Simmons and her mother filed a lawsuit against the county Board of Elections in connection to the primary election, alleging the issues amounted to voter discrimination and suppression against the local Latino population.
Los Flamboyanes was a polling location for Tuesday's general election, but the day's polling was not without hiccups, Vasquez-Simmons said. The interpreter was not always available throughout the day, she said, which made it difficult for some to navigate the voting process.
Gwendolyn Davis, who has worked the polls at Los Flamboyanes for the last 18 years, said there were very few voter issues during the day. If someone's name didn't show up in voter registration records, which was uncommon, they were given an affidavit ballot, she said.
"I think Los Flamboyanes had a great turnout (today,)" Vasquez-Simmons said Tuesday. "I kept reminding them as we were driving that we have about two and a half hours left for them to reach the polls, and make a difference. We're going to make history. We're going to change the narrative."
Sarah Taddeo is a New York state reporter for the USA Today Network.
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