Members of the 51,000-member, $117 million Latino Community Credit Union, as well as members of thegeneral public, will be able to register to vote or update theircurrent voter registration at all of the Durham, N.C., creditunion's locations next week.

The credit union is making the branches available to bilingualvolunteers from four non-profit voter registration organizations,including Democracy North Carolina, El Cambio NC, El Pueblo and theLatin American Coalition to sign up voters and help alreadyregistered voters make any necessary changes to their voterregistration.

“Our goal is to provide a safe and easy way for members andnon-members to register to vote,” said Erika Bell, vice president of Strategy & Services at LatinoCU.

“If members of the community who are eligible to vote need toregister or update their information, they can conveniently do soat their local credit union. It is another way to help encouragevoters to exercise their right,” Bell said.

Voter registration forms and voter rights information will beavailable in English and Spanish, the credit union said, and theorganizations involved would be registering the voters andforwarding the completed registration forms to the properauthorities.

All the credit union will provide is the space for theregistration as well as publicizing its availability.

When asked whether the credit union risked being seeing astaking a partisan position because Hispanic voters are so highlysought after by both presidential campaigns, Bell said she didn'tthink so since the organizations which will actually registervoters are non-partisan.

At least one other North Carolina credit union, Mountain CU in the Asheville area, also hosted voterregistration drives this election season.