After his campaign sent out a letter threatening Latino immigrant voters with arrest, California Republican Tan Nguyen briefly became the poster child for Republican voter intimidation — and, unfortunately, the country’s most televised Asian American politician.
So as Nguyen’s fifteen minutes slowly trickle past, let’s take the opportunity to note that Nguyen’s politics and tactics have nothing do with the values of most Asian American voters and leaders. In 2004, Asian Americans voted anywhere between 61 to 74 percent for John Kerry. And even as we speak, progressive Asian American leaders are fighting in Boston and Ohio to preserve every American’s voting rights.
In Boston, City Councilman Sam Yoon recently asked the right questions when one of his colleagues tried to introduce a proposal to require voters to show ID. Quoted in the Boston Herald, Yoon says, “Somebody just needs to present any credible evidence that there is this widespread fraud and abuse. I think it’s largely a myth and it feeds anti-immigrant sentiment.”
Meanwhile, the Ohio 2006 blog reports that Subodh Chandra has sued “to enjoin Ohio’s new voter I.D. law on the basis that inconsistencies in the way the law is being enforced by the 88 different boards of election around the state make it fundamentally unfair and therefore unconstitutional.”
Hackable Diebold machines and Nguyen campaign letters represent the most blatant efforts at voter suppression. But voter ID programs can be just as invidious and effective. Here’s the explanation from the National Voting Rights Institute:
“We oppose the call for new voter identification requirements in Boston because such requirements threaten to disenfranchise perhaps tens of thousands of eligible voters who lack government- issued photo ID, particularly the elderly, people with disabilities, the poor and people of color.
“National research has shown that strict voter ID requirements could have a negative impact on the right to vote for millions of U.S. citizens, but there are still officials who attempt to make it a prerequisite for voting, advancing voter ID with false allegations of individual ‘voter fraud’, which research shows to be minimal.
“Voter ID, in fact, has no role in fixing the real ailments of our election system and would not protect against the rare occurrence of ‘voter fraud’. The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) reports that while 200 million votes were cast in federal elections since October 2002, only 86 individuals have been convicted of federal voter fraud — and none for offenses that would have been prevented by a voter ID requirement. An extensive analysis of election fraud conducted by Professor Lorraine Minnite at Barnard College in 2002 — the only study of its kind, to date — found that voter fraud is rare and that safeguards to prevent fraud are already in place.
So absolutely, let’s keep our eye on the Nguyen case. But let’s also tout folks like Chandra and Yoon, progressive Asian American leaders who are fighting for all of our rights even as we speak.
Parts of this diary originally posted at AsiansVote.com, bringing you the latest on progressive Asian American politics and politicians.