Voting rights battle in Washington state raises allegations of diluting Latino votes
Amanda Snyder/Seattle Times/TNS

SEATTLE — Ana Ruiz Peralta, a 44-year-old Pasco resident and Mexican immigrant, ran last year for the Franklin County Board of Commissioners, talking about improving roads and mental health services, and being a careful steward of public money. But those were not the only things motivating the Democrat's campaign in a part of the state stretching north from the Columbia River through rapidly growing Pasco and across expanses of arid and irrigated farmland. It is an area long dominated politically by white conservatives and agricultural interests. "We're now the majority," Ruiz Peralta said of ...