What does Asian America think about the current presidential election? If you only pay attention to the mainstream media, you could come away with the impression that Asian Americans are not involved in the democratic process — or don’t really care. And this may also seem a bit ironic, considering that the presumptive Democratic nominee was born in Hawai‘i, went to school as a child in Indonesia and has a half-Indonesian half-sister .
But a group called Asian and Pacific Islander American Vote has set out to make sure that Asian American votes are counted.
Recent data from a 2006 U.S. Census Bureau report shows that voter-turnout numbers for Asian Americans match those of Latino voters at around 32 percent. But the percentage of Asian Americans registered to vote was only 49 percent, compared to 54 percent for Latinos and 61 percent for African Americans. Yet more than 80 percent of APIA immigrants are U.S. citizens, demonstrating that voter registration remains just as crucial today as it was when APIA Vote first started over ten years ago...
