Frank Cordova has spent 30 years registering Latinos to vote in the Salt Lake Valley, and now he's ready to take his show to the rest of Utah. The effort is paying off. Cordova estimates more than 17,400 Latinos were registered to vote in Salt Lake County in 2000. Today, there are close to 21,000. By gleaning voter surnames off voter lists, an admittedly unscientific approach, he estimated that Latino voter turnout topped 60 percent in the 2000 election. The 2000 census put the county's Latino population at nearly 107,000, so 21,000 may not seem like a lot of voters. But Cordova notes that a large proportion are children and perhaps as many as half are undocumented and, therefore, unable to cast ballots. Cordova gets a small stipend from the Southwest Voter Registration Project, and has the help of volunteers who set up tables outside markets, at community fairs and anywhere else they might sign up voters. "If we continue to educate and register voters . . . we're going to be a stronger political base politically. That's all there is to it." Cordova says he and other Latinos who were part of the Chicano movement in the 1970s didn't pass their political passions to the next generation, but they have learned a different approach. "We learned to talk a little better and to listen." That, in turn, is breeding more trust of Latino candidates by the wider community, he says. "We can't get elected with our vote. We need other people." - Kristen Moulton