Efforts are underway for Chinese-Americans to get out the vote in the heart of Chicago’s Chinatown with 68 days away until Election Day.
“Vote is power especially for our immigrant communities,” said Yonggang Xiao, who is the Senior Civic Engagement Manager. “If you don’t go out and vote maybe your voice won’t be heard.”
The Coalition for a Better Chinese American Community is among nine groups and organizations part of the non-partisan Democracy Project. The goal is to educate and encourage voters in immigrant communities to cast their ballot in this November’s election.
“They think the election doesn’t matter to their normal life,” said Xiao. “They think it’s so far from their regular life.”
The civic engagement manager told NBC Chicago it’s been challenging so far give the language barrier and misinformation on social media about the presidential candidates and election.
“We try to help them overcome this barrier, so we provide lots of the bilingual information to them and we recruit bilingual volunteers to help us do the outreach,” he explained.
Nousi Chen is a Democracy Project fellow this year and said she’s been door knocking, making phone calls, and reaching voters at events saying her work is crucial.
“If you’re not voting, your data, your statistic will show that Chinese American has a low voting rate that they don’t care about politics, they don’t need that help then how will people pay attention to you, right?” she said.
Volunteers at other groups met in Melrose Park. It’s one of several neighborhoods part of their canvass from Lake to Will Counties.
“The target is 250,000 voters, 80 percent of that will be in the suburbs of Chicago,” said Bassem Kawar, who is the political director of Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights. “It’s the traditional work we just have to go out there and have the conversations that no one is having.”
As of this week, the Illinois State Board of Election said 7.9 million people have already registered to vote. Four years ago, it was 8.3 million.
The Chicago Board of Elections said it received 6,577 new registrations since Aug. 12. The director of public information told NBC 5 a majority of new registrations are primarily young women. Data shows new registrations are spread across the city, but favor the North Side, lakefront, and downtown.
The elections division of DuPage County said it has seen a slight increase in new voter registration prior and during the week of the Democratic National Convention.
As for the outreach, volunteers will canvass the Bridgeport neighborhood Thursday morning and will be handing out ballot guides to voters.
The Coalition for a Better Chinese American Community says right now they only have four volunteers. They’re in need of more volunteers, who can speak Cantonese.