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Claudia Garcia had never watched a televised presidential debate. On September 10, she tuned into ABC News’ showdown between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris and was stunned to hear the Republican nominee repeat lies about Haitian migrants eating pets in Springfield, Ohio. “I was like, what?” Garcia recalls. “What is he saying? We are not that [as] people. We don’t eat dogs. We don’t eat cats.”
An infrequent voter, Garcia will be going to the polls for only the third time in her life this November. Born in Riverside, California, but having spent most of her childhood in Mexico, she felt disconnected from politics. Her father told her voting did not make a difference. “If it’s not affecting me directly,” she thought, “it’s not affecting me.” But her husband, Salvador, a newly naturalized US …