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Just Where Is the Asian American Woman’s Vote?
Their participation could make a difference, but their eligibility and rights have had a challenging start
In many ways, 32-year-old Korean American Hannah Kim is an active member of New York’s Queens community. A law school graduate and private school teacher, she volunteers her time interpreting for Koreans at immigration court and teaches Bible study every weekend. Yet, how did she demonstrate her civic duty at the polls during the 2016 presidential election? “I literally just sat there and flipped a coin,” Kim said.
Her disengagement with politics is not a rarity in the Asian American community. The Asian Americans and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community often demonstrates the lowest voter turnouts in the country. Startling 2012 numbers from the U.S. Census show that only 48.7% of eligible Asian American women voted in the presidential election (compared to 53.9% of Latinas and 82.1% of African American women). Where is the Asian American woman’s vote?
As a result of discriminatory laws like the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, Asians were unable to naturalize and ineligible to vote in the United States until 1952. During this time, the first Asian Americans were elected to office; they in turn opened doors for immigration reform nationwide. Between 1960 and 2014, there was a 2,597% increase in the number of Asian immigrants to the United States. Today, there are more than 20 million Asians in the nation, 85% of them are from Chinese, Indian, Filipino, Vietnamese, Korean, and Japanese origin groups. However, those numbers do not result in more voters per se. Pei-te Lien, a political science professor at UC Santa Barbara, believes the idea that Asian Americans have the absolute lowest rates of voting is only true if one assumes all U.S. adults have the same eligibility to vote. “The main reason Asians do not vote in the United States has to do with their lack of citizenship and, to a lesser extent, nonregistration,” she said.
Nonetheless, researchers predict that by 2036, Asian Americans will make up 10% of eligible voters in the United States. These numbers mean politicians are finally beginning to pay attention to Asians as the fastest-growing racial minority in the United States. The Asian…
