Where Are Their Voting Rights?

Do you think everyone deserves to have a right to vote? My You and The World project is about Asian American voting rights and my goal about learning more about this topic is finding out the reasons why this is an issue in Philadelphia or in other cities and states in the U.S. I would like to find a way for Asian Americans to also have a voice in their community and politics. I’m interested in this topic because I volunteer at an activist organization call Asian American United (AAU) and I know they have been trying to help people in the asian community to have a voice in their own community and contribute to the society. For example, in chinatown, they would handle out surveys to anyone passing them and the surveys they hand out asking their opinions about what they want the empty parking lot to become in the future. Because they are handing surveys in chinatown, they have Mandarin translated surveys and English surveys. This allows anyone in that community to have a opinion about their community and how it may improve. Many Asians have a hard to vote because of the language difference. Many Asian immigrants knows very little English, whether it’s reading wise or speaking wise.

My connection to this is that for the past couple of years, my mom would like to vote but she knows that she doesn’t know how to read English so she decides not to vote. Many of the voting booth are not translated into other languages for the non-English citizens of the United States. This matters to me because I know people that have a hard time getting a citizenship and being unable to vote and for the people that are citizens in the U.S., they are unable to vote because of language difference. I think it’s important for others to know because everyone should be aware that not everyone is able to vote even if they are a citizen in the U.S. and people that are trying to become a citizen in the U.S. is harder now especially for immigrants that don’t understand any English.


Asian Americans United in Chinatown tabling for the 2015 primary.

AAU member talks to a citizen about the presidential election form in 2015.

Source:https://caamedia.org/blog/2016/10/27/for-asian-americans-in-battleground-states-voter-registration-is-just-the-beginning/


September 14, 2016: Volunteers are in the ballroom of a chinese restaurant, New Fortune, helping people register voters.

Source:http://reportingtexas.com/language-can-be-a-barrier-for-some-asian-american-voters/


Voting has been an issue for Asian American since 1882. When the first Voting Right Acts law was published, this did not allow specific Asian group to vote. In the year of 1943, Chinese Americans were permitted to vote, then following Asian Indians in 1946. Japanese Americans and other Asian American groups weren’t permitted until 1952. Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, AALDEF been known as an expert on voting issues for Asian Americans. They have even discussed with the Congress about the language barrier for citizens that would like to vote and much more. For the past 30 years, AALDEF would observe the amount of Asian Americans that would vote on Election day, they would also look into different Asian American groups like Cambodian, Japanese, and etc. In 2008 during the Presidential election, the AALDEF surveyed 16,665 Asian Americans in 11 different dialects of Mandarin. They noticed and were told that Asian Americans received a lot of racist comments from the poll workers. Some poll workers asked Asian voters to show their citizenship or identification.


50 years of Asian Americans and the Voting Rights Act

This timeline points out important events from an Asian Americans’ point of view.

Source:https://www.advancingjustice-aajc.org/report/50-years-voting-rights-act-asian-american-perspective

The Voting Rights Act has two clauses that benefits non-English speakers. In section 203, it states that polls can be translated to different languages if it is necessary. Right now, only 22 cities in the U.S. is able to follow that section and translate it to any Asian language required. In section 208 of the Voting Rights Act, it reads that translaters can be brought into the voting booth. Even though, the Voting Rights Act states that translaters can be brought into the voting booth; this isn’t allowed anywhere. Since 1998, twelve counties have been sued for not following section 208 of the Voting Rights Act. As the population of Asians increase, the amount of voters slowly increases too. In 2006, only 2.2% of the voter were Asians and in 2010, there were only 2.4% of the voters were Asians. Although a 0.2% of Asians does not seem much, but bit by bit the population of Asian voters would grow. In 2010, 49.9% of the voters in Hawaii were Asians while only 9.4% of the voters in California were Asians.


Now let’s take a look at this line graph showing voters of different race from 1988-2012.

Source:https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/18/magazine/27-million-potential-hispanic-votes-but-what-will-they-really-add-up-to.html


From my research, I noticed that voting and getting citizenship has a very close connection to each other. A major issue for Asian Americans to vote is the language difference which causes them not being able to vote. I wondering if there are ways for Asians that are not citizens, but have lived in the U.S. for many years to vote because if they have lived in U.S. for many years they should be treated the same as others since they are apart of this society. My questions will be more focused on individual actions like not allowing translaters into voting booths if the voter does not understand English when the Voting Rights Act allows it. There’s still a lot of information and details I did not learn yet, so in the future I hope to learn how individual people fight for Asian American voting rights and more reasons why Asian Americans are having trouble voting that not everyone knows.


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