These Gen Z Latinos are casting a ballot for the first time. What’s on their minds?

On a Friday after school, when most college freshmen would be getting ready for a night out, Isabel Gatdula sits next to her mother at the dining table of their Natomas home.

It’s before the election and the recent Inderkum High School graduate, is filling out her general election ballot for the first time. Next to her, Gatdula’s mother, a regular voter who immigrated to the U.S. from El Salvador, is also filling out her ballot.

“I’m just looking forward to having a voice in this presidential election,” Gatdula said.

Gatdula, who turned 18 in January, represents one of the fastest-growing voting blocs in the nation: Latino voters.

Every 30 seconds a Latino in the U.S. turns 18, the Pew Research Center estimates. Nationwide, about one in four Generation Zers are Hispanic, the cohort born between 1996 and 2010.

Since 2016, about 3.6 million U.S.-citizen young Latinos have reached voting age, according to Mark Hugo Lopez, director of global migration and demography at the Pew Research Center.

In California, there are an estimated 2.4 million eligible Latino voters between the ages of 18-34. As of Oct. 26, nearly a week before Election Day, about 325,601 of those young Latinos have turned in their ballots early, according to Paul Mitchell, vice president of Political Data Inc.

These young Latinos are casting their ballots in an election unlike any other. They’re confronted with a global pandemic that has disproportionately impacted Latino communities, nationwide protests over police brutality and a divisive incumbent president running for re-election who has made disparaging remarks about immigrants and Latinos.

“Latinos, in general, have been so hit by coronavirus and unemployment,” said Latino Community Foundation’s CEO Jacqueline Martinez Garcel. “These are the sons and daughters of family members who have been impacted by this.”

We spoke to five young first-time Latino voters to learn more about why they are voting.

Unhappy with Trump

Young people in immigrant or Latino households, where language is a barrier, oftentimes are the ones translating information for other family members. Presidential election ballots are no different.

This year 18-year-old Marco Lopez of Elk Grove filled out his mail-in ballot for the first time, along with his parents, who are also first-time voters. While filling out his ballot with his family, his parents leaned on his older brother to become educated about candidates and ballot measures.

The American River College student said he’s unhappy with President Donald Trump’s response to the pandemic and believes more should be done to find solutions to address racism in the country that the Black Lives Matter movement has underscored.

“It’s more about voting people out of office,” Lopez said about his and his family’s decision to vote this year. “It feels like it’s an obligation ... if you don’t like something, you got to fix it. So we’re doing our part to help fix it.”

Voting for jobs

Salvador Ocampo, the son of a Spanish father and Mexican mother, is voting for the first time after registering to vote online in October.

“I felt that this year was very important for young people to vote,” the 22-year-old said, who works part-time at a grocery store near Brentwood.

Ocampo did not vote in 2016 despite being eligible to vote because he did not feel passionate about either presidential candidate. But his sentiment changed due to Trump’s position on trade policies with foreign nations and desire to re-open the economy due to plummeting unemployment rates.

He cast his ballot for President Trump but he does not identify as a Republican. He considers himself to be an independent voter.

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Growing up, voting was not widely discussed in his family.

“They never actually raised us to vote or have a political side,” he said.

From the Central Valley

While Johnny Rosa has two older brothers who are eligible to vote, the youngest of three is leading by example when it comes to voting.

Rosa lives in Parlier, about 20 miles southeast of Fresno. When he’s not attending online classes at the University of California, Berkeley, he works as a phone bank leader at 99Rootz, a civic engagement organization based in the Central Valley.

Because his parents, who are from Mexico and Honduras, are not citizens or eligible to vote, Rosa feels the responsibility is on him to represent their voices by voting for the first time this November. In his household, “voting wasn’t really talked about,” he said.

His involvement with the civic engagement organization began when he was a high school sophomore and he pre-registered to vote when he was 17 years old.

Rosa feels Central Valley issues are often overlooked, especially when it comes to the region’s “lack” of education funding and the limited opportunities for Latinos to get into competitive colleges in his community.

It’s why he’s passionate about repealing California’s 1996 ban on affirmative action. He’s voting for Proposition 16, which would overturn that ban and allow gender and racial considerations in hiring, contracting and college admissions.

“We’re understaffed, some of our buildings are portable, they’re not even buildings,” he said of his former high school in Parlier. “They’re just lacking so many resources. Sometimes teachers pay out of pocket for their own materials.”

‘We have a responsibility’

Gatdula, now an environmental student at UC Berkeley, pre-registered to vote when she took her driving permit test at age 16.

She’s worried about racism, the federal government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the wildfires that have devastated California this year. The climate crisis is an issue that’s brought up in her classroom.

“We have a responsibility as people who are able to vote to participate in our democracy,” she said.

Her friend Mariah Escobar, who turned 18 last month, didn’t realize until June that she would be eligible to vote this year. Before the pandemic, she looked forward to her freshmen year at Azusa Pacific University this fall. Instead, she living at home and taking courses online.

Top issues for her include the pandemic, criminal justice and immigration reform, particularly advocating for a pathway for undocumented immigrants and recipients of the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. She described the process that her father and grandfather, who are from Mexico, took to obtain their U.S. citizenship as time-consuming and difficult.

“I know it was a hard process and I feel like it can be easier,” she said.

They both returned mail-in ballots ahead of Election Day.