voting

More than ever before, Luis Mancheno feels the heavy burdens of the color of his skin and his national origin. Come November 8, he’s looking for some relief.

Potentially millions of Americans will be shut out by onerous voter registration laws, many of them new and deliberately discriminatory.

Now that millennials outnumber Baby Boomers, they could be a significant voting block — if they vote.

Now that Oregon will automatically register anyone with a driver's license to vote, Pennsylvania is looking at taking the move even further. It could add as many as 2 millions Pennsylvanians to the voter rolls, and President Barack Obama also is now recommending action to increase turnout.

Minority voters once faced poll taxes, tests and other blatant methods of keeping them away from the polls. But while those methods are gone, political science says voter discrimination is now simply more subtle — and possibly more widespread.

This month's midterm elections saw the lowest voter turnout in 70 years. That may be because in an era of smartphones and on-demand everything, American voting procedures are still the ones that best fit the agricultural rhythm of the country's early years.

The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 granted amnesty to some three million illegal immigrants already in the country. One of those who benefited was Rosaura Piñera, the great-grandmother of Fronteras reporter Monica Ortiz Uribe.