But more than anything else, its about breaking breaking down the language barrier. More than a third of Asian-American voters aren’t fluent in English, and they don’t share a common language. That makes Asian American voters hard to reach for many candidates. “It’s too difficult for them to translate the mailers, it’s too difficult to try and find volunteers that speak their language, Ahmed says. She points out that that “a lot of what it means to be engaged in the political process in the US is getting materials from candidates and campaigns because they’re trying to win your vote. Many Asian Americans simply dont get that opportunity at all. So Ahmed is running a phone bank that uses young student volunteers to answer questions about voting in 17 different languages, including Vietnamese, Bengali, Urdu and Mandarin. The goal is to get roughly 30,000 registered voters who dont usually go to the polls to cast their ballots.
Posted on: Tue, 28 Oct 2014 22:08:55 +0000
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