Article: Ensuring Asian American Access to Democracy in New York City

“Ensuring Asian American Access to Democracy in New York City”
Volume 2:2, p. 87 (2004)
by Glenn Magpantay

ABSTRACT: Asian Americans face discrimination in some occasions when they exercise their right to vote. AA is the fastest growing minority group and more of them are becoming naturalized citizens. The articles discuss relevant policies in its connection to AA voting. Such policies are The Voting Rights Act and The Language Assistance Provisions of the Voting Rights Act. The American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF) employ many methods to collect and document date and details reasons for voting barriers that AA face. The AALDEF uses Election Day monitoring, voter complaint hotline, and multilingual exit poll as its means to gather information needed to understand the barriers and other reasons affecting AA ability to vote. The profile of the voters is discussed as well as the voting place such as how the voting process works in New York City. Many problems and complaints arise in the voting process such as the translation in the bilingual ballots as they are too small to read and were often misleading, and numerous poll sites had inadequate and poor language signage. The article aims to demonstrate several problems present in the voting places, which negatively affects voter turnout. The article tries to reinforce the Voting Rights Act so these problems can be fixed and to improve the administration of the elections. Several recommendations are presented to mitigate these problems to increase voter turnout among the AAPI population. The article highlights the fact that the complexity of the voting process and the gross errors that are not corrected. There should be an alliance between election officials and community groups to facilitate the voting operation process. The struggle for AAPIs right to vote continues as many election procedures do not function in accordance to the law.

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