Asian Americans voters face discrimination: report

By Matthew Bigg

ATLANTA (Reuters) - Asian American voters fear the discrimination some faced at polling stations in 2006 could resurface as they cast ballots in November's presidential election, a civil rights group said on Thursday.

Laws that enable Asian Americans from countries including China, Korea, Vietnam and the Philippines to get language and other kinds of assistance with voting were often flouted at the 2006 mid-term congressional elections, according to the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund.

The group cited examples of Asian Americans being asked to provide more identification than other citizens, in contravention of federal law. Those not on voter rolls but still eligible to vote were often not given provisional ballots to complete, it said in a report.

Under the landmark Voting Rights Act and a subsequent act, election officials in districts with more than 10,000 registered Asian Americans, or ones where their voting population exceeds 5 percent of a district's total, are mandated to provide certain help.

The provisions also apply in areas where there are low levels of literacy and people speak an Asian language, and mandate help such as translators and translated ballots and registration forms.

"Our major concern is that there is going to be a large number of newly registered Asian voters (in 2008) and many of the problems we have observed in 2006 will not have been fixed," said Margaret Fung, executive director of the fund.

She said that on polling day in 2006 there were many examples of "racist and intimidatory" remarks to Asian Americans such as: "'How come you don't speak English?', 'Why don't you go back to your home country?' and 'You're turning this country into a dump.'"

The group said it registered 200 complaints during monitoring of 172 polling sites and a multilingual survey of over 4,700 Asian American voters in nine states.