The Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund
(AALDEF), a New York-based national civil rights organization, will
dispatch attorneys and volunteers to document voter problems and the
availability of language assistance today in New York
City during the primary.
In addition to the New York Democratic and Republican presidential
primaries, there is a special election in Lower Manhattan for the 65th A.D.
seat formerly held by ex-Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, who was convicted
on federal corruption charges last November.
AALDEF will also conduct a nonpartisan bilingual exit poll to get a
snapshot of Asian American candidate preferences, party enrollment, and
issues of significance to Asian American voters at polling places in
Manhattan’s Chinatown and Lower East Side. The exit poll results will be
released Tuesday evening.
.@aaldef volunteers are doing a bilingual exit poll of Asian American voters in #Chinatown on #PrimaryDay in NYC. pic.twitter.com/XCAbRiAPTN
— AsianAmericanLegal (@aaldef) April 19, 2016
AALDEF’s poll monitoring efforts have taken on heightened significance in
light of the Supreme Court decision in Shelby v. Holder, which weakened the
preclearance provisions of the Voting Rights Act. AALDEF successfully used
the preclearance process in the past to secure bilingual ballots for
Chinese American voters and challenge voting barriers faced by Asian New
Yorkers.
.@aaldef on @WBAI: Asian American voter problems: incorrect names on voter rolls, no language assistance, mistranslated ballots #PrimaryDay
— AsianAmericanLegal (@aaldef) April 19, 2016
AALDEF will monitor the November 2016 elections at polling places in 14
states and conduct a multilingual exit poll of Asian American voters. In
the 2012 presidential elections, AALDEF polled 9,096 Asian American voters
in 14 states with large Asian American populations. AALDEF has conducted
exit polls of Asian American voters and monitored polls in every major
election since 1988.
.@aaldef‘s Jerry Vattamala tells @GBrowneMarshall @WBAI that we had to sue @BOENYC to provide Bengali ballots for South Asian voters/Queens
— AsianAmericanLegal (@aaldef) April 19, 2016
.@GBrowneMarshall @WBAI says Asian American voting problems are often overlooked; Chinese Americans need to have access to our democracy.
— AsianAmericanLegal (@aaldef) April 19, 2016
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