Mi Familia Vota And The SEIU Seem To Be VERY GOOD Friends—UPDATED
by Don on Oct. 24, 2010, under UncategorizedMi Familia Vota is one of two groups that reportedly registered thousands of new voters in and around Yuma last week.
Mi Familia Vota’s Arizona HQ address is 3707 N. 7th Street, Suite 100 in Phoenix
The address of SEIU Arizona is…um, 3707 N. 7th Street, Suite 100 in Phoenix.
Maybe it’s a really, really big suite?
This Yuma Sun article described Mi Familia Vota as a non-partisan organization. However, blogger Hunter Cantor, a fellow who, it’s fair to point out, is apparently is NOT an Organizing For America member, noticed that SEIU Arizona and Mi Familia Vota have been cohabitating for years.
Care to guess what political party the SEIU is supporting this year?
Hunter has a lot more to say about Mi Familia Vota and its ties to the SEIU. He posts a graphic that appears to be a Powerpoint slide from a Mi Familia Vota briefing. The briefing says that Mi Familia Vota was founded by “Eliseo Medina, Executive Vice President for SEIU.”
Eliseo Medina (born 1946) is a labor activist and advocate for U.S. national immigration reform. Medina, born in Huanusco, Zacatecas, Mexico, the son of a Bracero, had been a farm worker in Delano since completing the 8th grade. He was 19 when the Delano grape strike began in 1965, and became an organizer and board member of the United Farm Workers (UFW). A master of UFW boycott operations in the midwest and of many successful union representational elections and contract negotiations under the 1975 Agricultural Labor Relations Act, he was considered by many[who?] to be a logical successor to Cesar Chavez[citation needed]. In 1996, he became the first Mexican American elected to a top post at the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), and also is an honorary chair of the Democratic Socialists of America.
(Emphasis added)
Eliseo Medina’s SEIU profile. Compare the photograph of Medina behind a podium, with the photograph of the founder of Mi Familia Vota, in the slide shown on Hunter Cantor’s blog.
There’s also this:
In a SEIU Press release of Nov. 1 2004 titled “Anatomy of an Election Strategy: The Facts on SEIU’s Role in Bringing Home a Victory for America’s Working Families” proudly describes how they use 501(c)(3) organizations to “shape the outcome of presidential election” and specifically lists the organizations founded by SEIU leadership. Among them we find both America’s Families United AND Mi Familia Vota. SEUI lists in the press-release:
Mi Familia Vota: SEIU Contribution $500,000; SEIU leaders helped found the organization; SEIU Executive Vice President Eliseo Medina is on the Board of Directors.
Here’s a link to the text of the 2004 SEIU press release, from George Washington University. This part jumped out at me:
Creating strategic grassroots organizations. SEIU’s leadership helped build bold new organizations to coordinate and fund sophisticated grassroots efforts. President Andy Stern and other SEIU leaders founded and/or serve on the boards of the largest and most progressive community-based voter mobilization groups like ACT, America Votes, Mi Familia Vota, American Families United, and the New American Opportunity Campaign.
(Emphasis on “Mi Familia Vota” in the last paragraph added).
Mi Familia Vota’s ties to the SEIU apparently extend to Washington D.C. as well:
The web-site domain for Mi Familia Vota (mifamiliavota.net, created Aug 14, 2006) is and has been officially owned and registered by the SEIU. All contact names/addresses/email for the domain are listed as part of the SEIU in Washington.
Contact: domain.manager@seiu.org
Domain name: mifamiliavota.netAdministrative Contact:
Domain Manager (domain.manager@seiu.org)
Fax: +1.2027307304
1800 Massachusetts Ave NW
Washington, DC 20036, US
Now, is there anything wrong with partisans trying to recruit voters? No. Does Mi Familia Vota have the right to mobilize voters and try getting its favored policy positions enacted into law? Of course they do. Does Mi Familia Vota have the right to choose political allies who share its own viewpoints? Certainly.
But, does Mi Familia Vota sound like a non-partisan organization to you? Does the SEIU?
Update: Meanwhile, in Colorado…
A federal judge declined to force the secretary of state to reactivate approximately 6,000 new voters whose registrations were canceled under Colorado’s 20-day rule.
In a decision issued Monday, Senior U.S. District Judge John L. Kane denied a motion for a preliminary injunction that was requested by several labor and voting-rights groups.
When a new voter registers in Colorado, the secretary of state mails a nonforwardable notice of disposition that the voter’s registration has been received. If the notice comes back undeliverable in the mail, then clerks deem the voter’s registration inactive within 20 days.
Melody Mirbaba, an assistant attorney general, argued that the 20-day rule is designed to stop voter fraud and duplicate registrations.
James Finberg, an attorney representing voting and labor groups, said voters are harmed because sometimes the voter cards are returned through no fault of their own.
He said some voters have filled out their address incorrectly on forms; clerks sometimes make errors when inputting the new data; and postal workers also make mistakes in delivering the voter cards.
But Mirbaba argued that inactive voters can still show up at the polls and vote on a provisional ballot until their addresses can be verified.
“I am unable, based on the arguments made and the record before me, to conclude that Plaintiffs have made a strong, or even colorable, showing that the balance of harm weighs in favor of the interim relief requested,” Kane wrote in his decision.
The motion for the preliminary injunction is one of several federal challenges regarding purged voters filed against the secretary of state by Common Cause of Colorado, Mi Familia Vota Education Fund and the Service Employees International Union.
(Emphasis added)
