Does Your Vote Really Count?
by Suzette Lam, staff writer

Inside the cafeteria of P.S. 124 in Chinatown, a crucial decision was being made by parents as they dashed in during their lunch breaks or after work. It was Election Day 2000 and Chinatown residents rushed into P.S. 124 to place their votes for the next President of the United States. Inside P.S. 124, volunteers with the Asian American Exit Poll sponsored by the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF) were trying to convince voters leaving the booths to take a moment to fill out the survey.

The goal of these efforts? To document Asian American voting patterns and to see if Asian voters were being treated fairly and were provided with translators, bilingual ballots, and other necessary resources at the polling sites.

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"What they're [AALDEF] doing is having the community represented. There's a stereotype that Asian Americans aren't politically involved," said Grace Jean, 32, a law student at Brooklyn Law School. "This poll breaks down that stereotype."

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Up until today, Asian American voter patterns have never been examined in major presidential elections. In 1996, the Voter News Service (VNS), a joint effort of major news organizations to survey voters, attempted to poll Asian American voters nationwide. However, VNS reported inaccurate numbers. According to the VNS exit poll, the majority of Asian American voters supported Dole for president in 1996. AALDEF refuted these results because they seemed incorrect.

"Their sample included only 170 Asian Americans nationwide out of 16,000 voters and was only conducted in English," said Margaret Fung, director of AALDEF. "VNS' original findings were inaccurate and misleading."

As it turns out, according to a 1994 New York City Voter Assistance Commission report, 44 percent of Asian Americans in New York are registered Democrats and only 17 percent are registered Republicans. VNS later annexed their report to show that more than 80 percent of Asian American voters voted for Clinton in the 1996 elections.

AALDEF established the Asian American Exit Poll in 1988 to provide accurate statistical information about Asian American voting patterns, an issue that had posed as a problem in the past. To ensure accurate and unbiased statistics for future use, sponsoring organizations like AALDEF, the Chinatown Voter Education Alliance (CVEA), the Korean American Voters' Council, the South Asian Youth Action, and the Young Korean American Service and Education Center used only non-partisan volunteers.

"What they're [AALDEF] doing is having the community represented. There's a stereotype that Asian Americans aren't politically involved," said Grace Jean, 32, a law student at Brooklyn Law School. "This poll breaks down that stereotype."

One of the major concerns of the survey was to accurately represent non-English speaking voters and discredit this long held stereotype. The Federal Voting Rights Act states in Section 203 that bilingual ballots and translators are provided for at polling sites. AALDEF wanted to make sure that all Asian voters were accounted for and not just those who spoke English. To address the problem of language, AALDEF and the sponsoring organizations also sent extra translators to polling sites in neighborhoods with a large Asian population to help out.

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