US polls: Activists allege discrimination

A New York-based civil rights organisation on Thursday told the US Congress how Asian American voters, including Indian Americans, faced hurdles in 11 states and the District of Columbia during the 2008 presidential elections that prevented them from exercising their franchise.

In a report delivered at a hearing of the US House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties on 'Lessons Learned from the 2008 Election', the Asian American Legal Defence and Education Fund said there were violations of Asian Americans' voting rights during the election, including incidents of anti-Asian voter disenfranchisement.

The report, 'Asian American Access to Democracy in the 2008 Elections', documents such violations based on its monitoring of 229 poll sites in 11 states, including in New York and New Jersey, and a multilingual exit poll of 16,665 Asian American voters.

'In the 2008 elections, Asian Americans faced an array of barriers that prevented them from exercising their right to vote. Voting rights enforcement and election reform should be top priorities for Congress and the new Administration,' said AALDEF executive director Margaret Fung.

AALDEF received more than 800 complaints of voting barriers, which are described in the report. Some of the problems encountered by Asian American voters included inadequate language assistance such as interpreters or translated voting materials, as required by law in New York and Boston.

The report says that some poll workers were rude, hostile, and made racist remarks. Poll workers in New York, for example, said they did not trust Asian American voters and denied them the right to vote or described them as terrorists.

'A Sikh voter was made to vote by provisional ballot because a poll worker said there were too many Sikh voters and she couldn't figure out which one the voter was,' the report said.

AALDEF sent complaint letters to local election officials that detailed these voting obstacles and offered recommendations for improvements. AALDEF staff attorney Glenn D Magpantay said vigorous enforcement of the Voting Rights Act is still very much needed.

Copies of the complaint letters were sent to the Voting Section of the US Department of Justice for further investigation.

AALDEF also made other recommendations to the House Subcommittee during the hearing, calling for legislation to allow universal voter registration and Help America Vote Act amendments to clarify that voting by provisional ballot should also be used to correct errors and omissions in voter registration forms, as was recommended by the Carter/Ford National Commission on Federal Election Reform.