BI-PARTISAN COALITION EFFORTS ENSURE
AMERICA’S RIGHT TO VOTE

Washington, D.C. – On Thursday, July 20, 2006, the US Senate unanimously voted to renew expiring provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA), the Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks and Coretta Scott King Voting Rights Act Reauthorization and Amendments Act of 2006 (H.R. 9 / S.2703). The bill is expected to be sent quickly to President Bush for his signature. A cornerstone of the Civil Rights Movement, the VRA guarantees all citizens the right to vote and provides safeguards against rampant discrimination that continues to plague our citizens to this day. Through a united coalition of political leaders, community-based organizations, and civil rights activists, the campaign to renew the VRA culminated in an overwhelming show of solidarity and bipartisanship and reinforced the importance of full participation in the American political process.

“Working in coalition with the Renew the Voting Rights Campaign, APIAVote is proud to be a part of this monumental victory. Asian and Pacific Islander Americans rallied together across the country to loudly voice that every citizen’s vote is sacred and deserves to be protected. With 85% of the Asian American community turning out,” stated Christine Chen, APIAVote Executive Director. “Utilizing language assistance measures provided under the VRA such as translated ballots, translated registration forms, and multi-lingual poll workers, APIA registration has grew 58.7% and turnout of registered APIA voters increased 71% between 1996 and 2004.”

Nearly two-thirds of the Asian and Pacific Islander American (APIA) community is foreign born and as of 2004, as many as 13 million APIAs live the United States. According to the 2004 American Communities Survey, more than half of APIAs acquired citizenship through naturalization and 76% of APIAs speak a language other than English at home. Currently, language assistance extends to over 672,750 APIAs in 16 jurisdictions, in 7 states: Alaska, Hawai’i, California, Illinois, New York, Texas, and Washington.

In addition to renewing the Section 5 federal protection and observer requirements, Congress renewed Section 203 which requires bilingual voting assistance for language minority communities in jurisdictions with large language minority communities. Section 203 significantly impacts immigrant communities, including APIAs, who are limited English proficient.

The original purpose of the Voting Rights Act aimed to address the institutional racism that prevented minority communities from participating in the American democracy. Unfortunately, many of those barriers still exist despite some progress made at the state level. For example, in Harris County, Texas, the Vietnamese population is large enough to qualify under Section 203 of the VRA to provide bilingual assistance to Spanish and Vietnamese speaking voters. However, in 2003, Harris County election officials failed to comply with Section 203 by refusing to provide Vietnamese ballots or any bilingual assistance. Pressure from community organizations and the Department of Justice resulted in an agreement whereby Harris County agreed to ensure compliance with Section 203 of the Voting Rights Act, including hiring a full-time employee to coordinate the Vietnamese election program for all elections within the County, establishing an advisory group to assist and participate in the Vietnamese language program, and requiring a bilingual poll worker be present at each polling place that has more than 50 Vietnamese-surnamed registered voters at the time of an election. In the wake of these changes, the November 2004 election saw the first Vietnamese candidate, Hubert Vo, win a legislative seat in Harris County. Examples like Harris County demonstrates a need for continued oversight of the very federal election laws that safeguard and protect voters that have historically been disenfranchised.

“Without the VRA,” Chen states, “millions of American citizens would be faced with a formidable obstruction to the ballot box, blocking their inherent rights to democracy and the freedom to vote. Renewal of the VRA ensures that all Americans are afforded their right to full civic participation.”

###

The Asian and Pacific Islander American Vote (APIAVote) is a national non-partisan, nonprofit organization that encourages and promotes civic participation of Asian Pacific Islander Americans in the electoral and public policy processes at the national, state and local levels.