California is a racially diverse state — there’s no one race that makes up the majority of its population. As its population has grown, groups within the state have worked to increase language accessibility on several fronts. Those include more translated, or in-language, election materials and assistance.
One such group is the Asian Americans Advancing Justice’s Asian Law Caucus. Started in 1972, it’s the longest-running legal and civil rights organization in the U.S. focused on serving immigrant and underserved Asian American and Pacific Islander communities.
The group monitors polls to ensure compliance with section 203 of the Voting Rights Act, which mandates that minority-language election materials should be made available for voters in counties where more than 10,000 or 5% of all voting-age citizens have low English proficiency and are members of a single-language minority group. Spanish-heritage, Asian, Native American and Alaskan Native languages are included in that.
Due to that legislation, Central Coast counties offer ballots, resources and more in languages including Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese and Tagalog. It’s particularly pertinent: A 2023 report authored in part by the Asian Law Caucus found Latino and Asian American voters were most likely to cite “difficulty with English” as the main deterrent to voter registration.
Deanna Kitamura from the Asian Law Caucus’s voting rights team spoke with KAZU’s Janelle Salanga about how language access has historically helped boost voter registration and turnout and existing translated election resources.
Read more primary election coverage from KAZU’s news team on our election page.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Janelle Salanga: Walk me through … the Asian Law Caucus’s history in pushing for more access to the polls for Asian communities and Asian folks in California.
Deanna Kitamura: Asian Law Caucus started working on voting rights in the early 1990s. It went dormant for a few years, but then got recharged in around 2009. And it started with redistricting, and then further branching out to language access issues and doing poll monitoring. And now we do [work on] the whole gamut of voting rights issues.
JS: Tell me a little bit about how you've seen translated, or in-language, material help more people participate in elections. Do you have stories that you can share?
DK: The Asian American community is made up of about 14% of adult citizens in California, and we are the fastest growing racial group in the state. And among U.S. citizens in California, about 32% of Asian Americans speak English less than very well.
Now, those numbers vary by ethnicity groups — the highest limited English proficiency rate is among Vietnamese Americans at 52%. But other ethnic groups have high limited English proficiency rates that range between 37 and 40%. So there was a clear need for language assistance.
… When San Diego started providing comprehensive language assistance services under federal law, voter registration rose by more than 20% for Filipino Americans, and by almost 40% for Vietnamese Americans. … So language assistance not only helps voters in terms of being able to understand what's on their ballots, but also results in higher turnout.
JS: One of the ways that California has tried to increase voting access has been through the Voter’s Choice Act. So fill me in on what that legislation has done and how that's impacted the availability of translated resources for different counties in the state.
DK: Traditionally, voters could only vote on Election Day in their designated precincts. The Voter’s Choice Act is a law that passed in 2016. And it allows counties to adopt a different type of model of voting, it allows them to … to have vote centers, and those vote centers are open more days, but there are fewer vote centers than neighborhood polling places.
The majority of voters in California live in counties with vote centers. So for example, Santa Cruz and San Benito counties have adopted that model. Monterey [County] still uses traditional polling places.
Each vote center must have either a bilingual poll worker that's present, or they have to have a hotline available in all the different languages that are covered in the county so that voters can … access an interpreter on the day of the election. Traditional counties, traditional poll places must also provide language assistance, but it's more limited in that they only have to provide it at the precinct level for certain, certain languages.
JS: Where are you directing people to look for in language translated resources for voting if they're in a Voter’s Choice county, like Santa Cruz or San Benito, voting early, or … voting on Election Day?
DK: Asian Law Caucus has a Know Your Voting Rights fact sheet on our website. And that's at advancingjustice-alc.org, you should look for the “Voting Rights” page. And there … are a couple of fact sheets that are translated into 10 languages. And then the Secretary of State also provides materials, resources for voters … On the front page of the Secretary [of State]'s website, there are resources in 10 languages. And there's also a hotline available for those 10 languages in the contact information section.
JS: Moving forward, how is Asian Law Caucus continuing to work on reducing barriers to election access?
DK: One of the things that we're working on is a bill in Sacramento, it’s Assembly Bill 884. And if it passes, it would increase the number of languages that receive comprehensive language assistance. And it would also provide votable ballots to two small communities.
… We also work on other other issues, not just in terms of language access, but to try to make it so that it's easier for people to vote, as well as to make sure … that votes are not diluted in any way during the process. And so that people are empowered so that their vote counts just as much as any other vote.
