Peter Dao wants his fellow Vietnamese Americans to get out and vote.
As a host on Voice of Vietnamese Americans Radio 1600 AM, he’s trying to get those in his community who haven’t been as traditionally engaged to go to the polls.
And he thinks it’s working.
On the first day of early voting, Dao told KERA News as he stood outside the VVA studio in Asia Times Square in Grand Prairie that the line to get into the polling place there stretched at least 100 yards.
In Arlington, Asian Americans account for 7% of the population, according to city data. Census data shows about the same percent of Grand Prairie residents are Asian, and nearly 5% of Mansfield residents identified as AAPI.
Data showing the number of Asian American residents in Arlington or Tarrant County are registered to vote wasn’t immediately available.
Nationally, the U.S. Census Bureau estimates that around 60% of Asian American voters cast a ballot in 2020, with nearly 64% of eligible Asian voters registered.
Dao, who came to the United States as a refugee of the Vietnam War, isn’t as concerned about who people vote for as he is how many vote. He wants to see the Asian American community represented and hopes increasing turnout will push elected officials to recognize them.
“Our votes are our voices,” Dao told KERA News. “If we don’t have enough votes than there’s no advantages to us in comparison to other communities that might have more votes than us. That’s one of things we have to remind our people.”
Ground game for voting
Asian Texans for Justice (ATJ) is taking a more on-the-ground approach. The group, formed in 2021, is a pan-Asian organization, founder Alice Yi said.
She saw that there were plenty of organizations across the state to serve specific groups of Asian American and Pacific Islander communities, but none that she knew of working to build connections across those communities.
Yi wants to see the Asian American communities across Texas come together without regard for whether they are from East Asian, Southeast Asian or South Asian heritages.
As they work on election education and getting out the vote, she said they’re also building coalitions, promoting civic engagement and encouraging young Asian Americans to become leaders.
Yi said ATJ has also been working to find out which issues matter to people in Asian American communities in Texas. The organization is non-partisan but knowing what matters to the communities allows ATJ to understand how to encourage people to vote.
“We did a little survey ... to show what our AAPI community is really interested in,” Yi said. “What is their top priority? We’re using those to generate our message.”
This year, ATJ has spent a lot of time knocking on doors.
LaShun Roy, a, ATJ coordinator focusing on Tarrant County, said the organization’s volunteers are handing out multi-lingual fliers. Handouts and mailers have messaging in Vietnamese, Korean, Chinese, Hindi and English.
That’s made a big difference, she said.
“People got excited when they were handed something they looked at and they didn’t just see that it was all English,” Roy told KERA News. “Sometimes that’s made the difference between these interactions that they’ve had with people as they canvass them at their homes and them wanting to actually engage and listen to what our canvassers have to say as opposed to like, ‘Hey, how are you. Goodbye, have a good day.’ ”
The handouts go over details like voting rights, protections, where to vote, how to make sure voters are properly registered and what to do if voters face discrimination or any efforts to stop them from voting.
ATJ has a tool called the Ballot Builder, which allows voters to put in their information and see the full ballot, with non-partisan descriptions of candidates platforms and stances. While the Ballot Builder was created for the AAPI community, Yi hopes others will make use of it for researching candidates, especially those down-ballot.
Reaching the Asian American electorate
Dao and Yi both said people tend to feel more comfortable when they can get voting information in their native or heritage language and from someone who looks like them.
VVA has hosted candidates on the air, too.
Like Denise Wilkerson, the Democratic candidate for Texas House District 94, and supporter Retired U.S. Rear Admiral Huan Nguyen.
The interview was largely in Vietnamese, with some help translating questions into English for Wilkerson and her answers into Vietnamese.
“We asked them what inspired them to go out and run for the office, whether it’s a state office or city or county,” Dao said.
Nguyen was born in Hue, Vietnam, and was the first Vietnamese American to attain a flag rank, meaning one of the admiral ranks. In the VVA interview, translated from Vietnamese for KERA news, Nguyen urged listeners to use their ballots as their voices.
“We are living in a country for the people and by the people, so please vote for the person who deserves to represent this community,” he said in Vietnamese, referring to electing the person to represent the Asian American community.
Dao said hearing information and interviews like that in their first language can help a lot of first-generation Vietnamese voters feel more comfortable with voting and being informed.
“Especially those who came recently and those who came after the April 1975 fall of Saigon, and those who lived under communism ... your vote doesn’t mean anything,” Dao said. “We see it different, we recognize our votes count. ... That’s the difference for our people to vote here.”
Some things already help those in the Vietnamese community in Arlington feel more comfortable going out to vote. Signs marking polling places include messaging in Vietnamese, and many polling places have translators for Vietnamese speakers.
Yi said there are still other communities that could benefit from having their native or heritage languages represented the same way, like Korean and Hindi.
KERA News is made possible through the generosity of our members. If you find this reporting valuable, consider making a tax-deductible gift today. Thank you.
