Here is some background and updates on the Ya Es Hora campaign:
This press release was issued in June, 2008

Univision And `Ya Es Hora' National Partners Join Mayors From Top Hispanic Cities On Voter Registration And Mobilization

Initiative Unveiled at U.S. Conference of Mayors Includes New PSAs and Local Voter Registration and Get Out the Vote Activities

New York, NY -- Univision Communications Inc, the nation's leading Spanish-language media company, and the "Ya es Hora" (It's Time) national partners, announced the expansion of this award-winning civic engagement campaign through new local efforts in partnership with mayors in the top Hispanic cities to register and mobilize voters. Mayors partnering in this effort include New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, Miami Mayor Manny Diaz, Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Houston Mayor Bill White.
As part of the partnership, the mayors will participate in public service announcements (PSAs) to run on Univision, Univision Radio and Univision.com (Keyword: Ya es Hora), which will support local grassroots activities taking place in their communities. In addition, Univision will also launch new PSAs focused on informing its audiences about absentee voting.

http://www.univision.net/corp/en/pr/New_ York_24062008-1.html

This campaign dates back to 2007.

The main website is:

Ya es Hora!

The History

Ya es Hora is a historic Latino civic participation campaign that represents the largest and most comprehensive effort to incorporate Latinos as full participants in the American political process. The national effort is lead by Mi Familia Vota Educational Fund, NALEO Educational Fund, the National Council of La Raza (NCLR), and Spanish-language media companies Entravision Communications, ImpreMedia, and Univision Communications, Inc.

This coalition of the nation's largest and most established Latino organizations and the country's largest Spanish-language media companies launched Ya es Hora, ¡Ve y Vota! (It's Time, Go Vote!), a non-partisan national voter mobilization effort targeting U.S. Hispanics. The campaign seeks to significantly increase Latino voter registration and turnout in the 2008 presidential elections through an unprecedented multi-media campaign that encompasses grassroots, print and broadcast outreach. In particular, the campaign will use aggressive non-partisan field efforts to ensure that Latinos are an important vote in the new Southwestern battleground states.

The coalition's Ya es Hora campaign has been organized into two strategic phases: Ya es Hora ¡Ciudadanía!, which worked to naturalize an estimated one million eligible legal permanent residents in 2007, and now, the Ya es Hora ¡Ve y Vota!, which will seek to register and mobilize millions of Latinos in 2008.

Voter information and education tools--including a toll-free bilingual hotline 1-888-Ve-Y-Vota, and a campaign website www.veyvota.org--will provide U.S. Latinos with information vital to the electoral process, from registering to vote to finding their polling place on Election Day. In addition, the hotline and field efforts will work with the national Election Protection 365 network to protect Latino voters and ensure voters' rights in 2008.

http://apps.facebook.com/causes/40944

Ya Es Hora (It's About Time) Hispanic Voting Drive Picks Up Support From State Farm Insurance
State Farm Insurance Company announced on June 26 that it will donate $1 million (and be the lead corporate sponsor) to the Ya Es Hora campaign to encourage more Latino U.S. permanent residents to become U.S. citizens. In addition to the cash donations, State Farm agents in Hispanic communities will provide naturalization applications and voter registration materials to their customers.

But these efforts have also had roadblocks, and the the Puerto Rican Legal Defense Fund has gone to court to deal with the dragging heels of the INS:

Latinos Seek Citizenship in Time for Voting

A lawsuit filed Thursday in a federal court in New York by Latino immigrants seeks to force immigration authorities to complete hundreds of thousands of stalled naturalization petitions in time for the new citizens to vote in November.

The class-action suit was brought by the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund on behalf of legal Hispanic immigrants in the New York City area who are eager to vote and have been waiting for years for the federal Citizenship and Immigration Services agency to finish their applications. The suit demands that the agency meet a nationwide deadline of Sept. 22 to complete any naturalization petitions filed by March 26.

Latino groups hope to summon the clout of the federal courts to compel the Bush administration to reduce a backlog of citizenship applications that swelled last year. According to the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan research group in Washington, more than one million citizenship petitions were backed up in the pipeline by the end of December, the majority from Latino immigrants.

A recent article discusses the PEW study, which has been diaried here before
Latinos now leaning toward Obama

In the Pew study, 55 percent said they believe Obama is better for Hispanics, while only 11 percent felt that Republican candidate John McCain is better. Furthermore, over half of the Latinos also believe that Obama would be better as president than McCain on such issues as education (66 percent to 18 percent), jobs (65 percent to 19 percent), health care (64 percent to 19 percent), crime (50 percent to 26 percent), and the war in Iraq (58 percent to 27 percent).

The Pew survey also reported that Hispanic voters increasingly identify with the Democratic Party -- 65 percent of registered voters say they are Democrats or lean toward the party, as opposed to only 26 percent who prefer Republicans. In 2004, President George W. Bush got 40 percent of the Latino vote, a record for GOP presidential candidates, the Pew report points out.

Latinos Overwhelmingly Support Obama and Democrats in 2008

Hispanic registered voters support Democrat Barack Obama for president over Republican John McCain by 66% to 23%, according to a nationwide survey of 2,015 Latinos conducted by the Pew Hispanic Center, a project of the Pew Research Center, from June 9 through July 13, 2008.

The presumptive Democratic nominee's strong showing in this survey represents a sharp reversal in his fortunes from the primaries, when Obama lost the Latino vote to Hillary Clinton by a nearly two-to-one ratio, giving rise to speculation in some quarters that Hispanics were disinclined to vote for a black candidate.

But in this new survey, three times as many respondents (32%) said being black would help Obama with Latino voters than said it would hurt him (11%); the majority (53%) said his race would make no difference to Latino voters.

Obama is rated favorably by 76% of Latino registered voters, making him much more popular among that voting group than McCain (44% favorable) and President Bush (27% favorable). Hillary Clinton's ratings among Latino registered voters are 73% favorable and 24% unfavorable; Obama's are 76% favorable and 17% unfavorable.

The Washington Post reported Barack's speech at the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) in July:

Obama Looks to Power of Latino Vote

What can make the real difference is Obama's ability to generate considerably larger turnout among Latino voters. Hispanic voters have the lowest voter registration rates of any racial constituency other than Asians. According to the Census Bureau, just 58 percent of eligible Hispanics were registered to vote in 2004, compared to 75 percent of non-Hispanic whites and 69 percent of blacks.

Once registered, Hispanics turned out in significant numbers, but still lagged behind non-Hispanic whites, blacks and Asians. In 2004, 82 percent of registered Hispanics actually voted, compared with 89 percent of non-Hispanic whites, 87 percent of blacks and 85 percent of Asians.

So there is an enormous potential payoff to Obama and the Democrats if they can successfully register a significant share of the millions of eligible unregistered Latinos. Obama cited the case of New Mexico to drive home his point to the LULAC audience. In 2004, Kerry lost New Mexico by 6,000 votes, but 40,000 registered Hispanics did not turn out to vote. The 6,000-vote margin, he said, represented a small fraction of the number of Hispanics in New Mexico who are not even registered.

"While I know how powerful a community you are, I also know how powerful you could be on November 4th if you translate your numbers into votes," Obama said.

Barack Obama at the LULAC Convention:

Transcript of Obama Speech at LULAC

Okay - what can you do?  You don't need to be able to speak Spanish, but it's a plus if you do.

First - check out Latinos for Obama

Find out what efforts are taking place in your area, and how you can help.

Every state in America has Latino/Hispanic populations, neighborhoods, grocery stores, churches, and social clubs.  Make sure that there are posters, campaign materials in English and Spanish in your areas.

Print out and distribute this flyer:

http://www.barackobama.com/static/Flyers /Issue_Flyers/latino_es.pdf

LULAC has a pocket guide on issues important to Latinos - check it out:
http://www.lulac.org/programs/civic/vote r/Voter_Pocket_Guide_2006.pdf

Volunteer to make phone calls.

Register people to vote.

Obamanos!

"Podemos con Obama"

Obama Spanish Language Spot