Asian American Voting Rights Activists' POV

Before reading on...take a look at my first blog post, Where Are Their Voting Rights?

This will give you background information of what is going on with Asian American voting rights from the past until of now. From the Voting Rights Act to the changes that have been made and the ways people have helped in this issue.

According to CAAM, in 2012, eight million Asian American and Pacific Islanders were able to vote and only 47.9 percent of them voted. Even though, the population of eligible voters increased by 29 percent since 2010, voting for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders is still a problem. Asian Americans that live in swing states like Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, and Pennsylvania is also a problem because it would take a longer and broader time of allowing them to in civic participation. Ways that they try increasing the population of Asian American voters are phone banking, going to door to door, and having volunteers to help out with voting registration and language difference.

For some Asian American voters, language is still a problem at voting polls. For example, Saurabh Das was not only able to vote at the poll, he was able to help other voters at the poll by translating the ballot in different languages for non-English speakers or readers. IN 2014, he was put in jail for translating for his mother at the voting poll and for not being registered to vote in Williamson County, Texas. Because he was put in jail, his mother wasn’t able to vote for the person she wanted to and mistakenly voting for a different person.

For my original research, I decided on interviewing Wei Chen, the Civic Engagement Coordinator of Asian American United (AAU) and Xu Lin, one of the board members of AAU and currently the owner of Bubblefish. I was also planning to send out surveys to seventh and eighth graders at my old school, FACTS because I thought that it was be better to have two points of view of Asian American voting rights, not only from experts but so young citizens because they will be making a difference in the community one day and from asking them for their opinions about Asian Americans will change knowledge of what’s going on and my perspective of Asian American voting rights. I wasn’t able to send out surveys because I thought of it as a plan b if my interviews did not work out as planned.

While I was interviewing Wei Chen, I learned that if people that are trying to make a change to voting rights for Asian Americans, it would take at least five to ten years to see little changes happening in the community. For elders or older generations from China, some may be unfamiliar with voting booths or polls because in China, there is no voting booths or polls.

For more information of the interview, take a look at the transcript below.

From the interview with Xu Lin, I learned that you don’t necessary need to be apart of an organization everyday to fight for the justice of the issue that you think is important. For example, Xu Lin is now an owner of a restaurant and since he would like to see a difference in Asian American voting rights, he is willing to allow GOTV volunteers to borrow the room in the restaurant for meeting and more.

To hear my interview with Xu Lin, view the voice recording below. I apologize in advance if it is hard to hear.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1R9REslzVWUGLt8CAMCoKl_Ii2gUKkdM_

For my Agent of Change part of the You and The World project, I was thinking of volunteering at Asian American United (AAU) to help out with voting registrations or notifying citizens in Philadelphia to register as a voter. I also thought of creating a presentation to present to the class or a class at a different school while volunteering at Asian American United because if I present this issue to others in the community, more people will be notified about this issue and pay more attention to voting rights and helping out citizens that are non-English speakers or readers. This is only an idea so I am not sure if my ideas for my Agent of Change would change or not.

Annotated Bibliography