LOS ANGELES – Capping off a three-month campaign to educate the Asian American community in the City of Los Angeles about the upcoming municipal general election, the Asian Pacific American Legal Center (APALC) urges voters to get to the polls on May 21 to elect a new mayor, city attorney, city controller, some city councilmembers, and a school board member.
Since March, leading up to the primary election, APALC has organized two candidates’ forums for community members of Council Districts 1 and 13, prepared candidate questionnaires to highlight the candidates’ positions on different issues impacting the Asian American community in Los Angeles, and recruited and deployed volunteers to door-knock and phone bank to encourage community members to vote in both the primary and the general elections.
According to Political Data Blog, voter turnout for the general election is expected to exceed turnout for the primary election, which was at just over 20 percent. Turnout by Asian American voters who vote by mail has already increased to 22 percent, up from 17 percent in the primary, and higher than all other racial groups.
“Our phone bank volunteers have been working hard so that more Asian American community members will go out and vote on May 21,” said An Le, director of APALC’s Community Engagement Project. “We have made more than 17,500 calls in Chinese, Korean, Tagalog, Khmer, Vietnamese, and English to make sure that people know of the election, and that they’ve received their sample ballots and know where to vote. With the historical pattern of low voter turnout in local elections, we hope the Asian American community can make a difference in which candidates become our new elected representatives.”
Included among the phone bank volunteers is the mother-and-daughter team of Connie Zheng, a high school senior and APALC volunteer for three elections, and her mother, Ngan Ng. “I am not old enough to vote, but I can still encourage others to vote, and if possible, to volunteer, because it is never too early or too late for you to start becoming engaged in your community,” said Zheng. “I recruited my mom to phone bank with me because I knew she would be able to talk to Chinese-speaking voters who may need in-language assistance to understand how to vote.”
Ng said, “I am happy that my daughter has been so active in encouraging the Chinese American community to go and vote. It is not always easy to talk to people about voting, but we hope that our calls will make a difference in getting more people out to the polls.”
In addition to providing assistance to voters through phone banks, APALC has a number of resources available, including responses to candidate questionnaires, which can be found at www.apalc.org, and multilingual voter hotline numbers. If voters have any questions about the electoral process, they are encouraged to call our voter hotlines: English: (213)241-0213; and Tagalog: (213)241-8845. Polls will be open from 7am to 8pm on May 21. Multilingual resources and assistance will be available at the polls in the following languages: Armenian, Chinese, Hindi, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, Tagalog, Thai and Vietnamese.
A project of the Asian Pacific American Legal Center, Your Vote Matters seeks to empower, mobilize, and protect the rights of Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Voters. APALC is a 501c3 non-partisan organization that does not advocate on behalf of parties or candidates. However, we will educate voters on select measures and propositions.
