Moon Park, 79, has been a Houston resident for the last 40 years. He describes his retirement lifestyle as on the quieter side, either staying home or going to church. 

Yet despite his age and being a first-generation Korean immigrant, he’s always been active in the Houston civic process.

Park makes sure to learn whatever he can about local politics, going to events such as a Harris County budget teach-in, one that’s undoubtedly important but certainly isn’t exactly the most thrilling point of political discussion for most Houstonians. 

Park said his engagement can be attributed to the work of local nonprofits, such as Woori Juntos, a Houston-based advocacy group for Koreans and other Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. It’s one of the many nonprofits that have kept AAPI Houstonians, like Park, active in local politics. From translating ballots into various Asian languages, teaching American politics through their events, and hosting cultural events, they’ve motivated many local Houston AAPIs to participate in the civic process. 

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related to voting

Your Voice, Your Vote: Houston Landing’s guide to November’s elections

by Houston Landing staff

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It’s impactful work, as AAPI’s are the fastest-growing racial and ethnic group in Houston. Some greater-Houston areas, such as Fort Bend County, even have an AAPI population of 34 percent of the eligible voter share. 

However, AAPI civic engagement has consistently remained low in the U.S. In the last three elections, only 21 percent of Asian age-eligible voters voted nationwide, compared to 37 percent of white age-eligible voters. 

With the upcoming election featuring the first Asian presidential candidate, politicians are keeping a keen eye on the AAPI voter demographic. Nonprofits throughout the Houston area are intensifying their voter activism efforts. However, within the city of Houston, these efforts often face unique local challenges.

Cultural barriers 

Houston has long been referred to as a melting pot of cultures and communities, a label accurate to its AAPI population as well. This is partly due to the majority being foreign-born immigrants, making up 71 percent of Houston’s AAPI population, according to the United States Census Bureau. While it makes Houston a one-of-a-kind city, it can also pose a challenge in political activism, said Debbie Chen of AAPI advocacy group OCA-Greater Houston, which has spent decades motivating the AAPI voting bloc in Houston.

"You have a mix of people who either came from countries where you don't really get involved in politics or come from countries where there is no such thing as voting,” Chen said. "It's not a democratic country where they came from; you have people who literally were fleeing here as refugees, much less having the opportunity to vote."

And these apolitical voting habits are one of many reasons behind Houston's AAPI frozen voting bloc. It not only suppresses Houston AAPI population against voting, but it also keeps them out of the political conversation in general, according to Rice University professor of political science Melissa Marschall.

"If we ask people why they don't vote, a big reason is, ‘Nobody asked me,’" Marschall said. "That has to do with both campaigns that are going to actively seek to recruit or mobilize voters, or just your networks, like your friends, people you work with." 

And for a population bloc where the concept of voting can be completely foreign, parties don't feel the need to reach out to AAPI voters either.

"If you don't have much of a voter history, the parties don't necessarily want to try to mobilize you… And if it's people in your network, other immigrants, or people in your ethnic origin group aren't voting. It's not something you talk about," said Marschall.

It's this cycle of low engagement and outreach that hurts AAPI political activism. On the metric of political party outreach, 42 percent of Asian American voters say they have not been contacted by either of the two major political parties this election season, according to a poll conducted by research and policy think tank AAPI Data, an advocacy organization based at the Asian American Research Center at UC Berkeley.

Translation services needed

With its diverse community and cultures, Houston has also become home to a diverse range of languages. However, providing comprehensive language accessibility can be a challenge, especially when significant shares of a language group identify as a limited English-speaking household, a common trend seen in AAPI household languages. 

To address this, there’s the Voting Rights Jurisdiction Act. Individual counties must provide language accessibility if a language group has more than 10,000 U.S. voting-age citizens or consists of more than 5 percent of all voting-age citizens of the county. But in a Houston Landing analysis of over 6.9 million people within the Houston Greater Area counties of Brazoria, Chambers, Galveston, Fort Bend, Harris, Liberty, and Montgomery county, some of the AAPI language groups not covered by language accessibility programs had non-English proficiency rates as high as 15 percent. 

Critics also argue that the census numbers used to measure a need for language access are often undercounted, and even then, counties that do implement language accessibility are limited to a few languages. Harris County, for example, only translates for Hispanic, Chinese, and Vietnamese language groups, meaning the brunt of translation work for other Asian languages often falls on local AAPI advocacy groups, such as Woori Juntos.

Quỳnh-Hương Nguyễn has been involved in Woori Juntos' language accessibility efforts, and while the work has been impactful, it hasn't been easy. 

"It's honestly updating new information and providing that as new voting rights laws are constantly changing,” Nguyễn said. “That's probably the hardest part, because right now, we are paying out of pocket for a lot of the language access resources. It is expensive."

Even with local translation services, advocacy groups can't cover everything, and limited English speakers still sometimes have trouble being fully informed on local politics. Park has been active in Woori Juntos, attending all its educational events, but was still frustrated by a Spring Branch proposition vote a couple of years ago. Finding more information on the proposition was difficult, and looking back, he believes he made the wrong choice on the ballot. 

"I didn't have any information about the things. So I was frustrated with myself,” he said. “I should get more information about those things."

With translation services, organizations such as Woori Juntos have slowly improved the  Houston area’s AAPI civic engagement. Woori Juntos said it has registered over 1,000 voters since its founding in 2021, despite Texas Senate Bill 1, a Republican-backed bill that attempts to prevent voter fraud but advocates argue discourages voting among those with limited English proficiency.

The ‘chilling effect’ of SB 1

As one of the organizers behind OCA, Chen and other nonprofits, such as the ACLU and League of Women Voters of Texas, have been part of a federal lawsuit challenging SB 1.  

She was motivated in part by her personal experience working with AAPI voters in Texas. Over the past three years, she says efforts to help AAPI voters understand the civic process has become much more difficult. 

Many voting advocates point to a key portion of SB 1 concerning election assistance, which states that, “any person interacting with a voter within a ballot's vicinity, found to be intentionally delivering votes for a specific candidate or measure in exchange of compensation or other benefit, is labeled as a voter harvester."

"We used to try and help people,” Chen said. “SB 1 eliminated that. You could not help people. You couldn't answer people's questions because the way it was written, it was so broad… It has a real chilling effect where people don't know where they can go and ask for help anymore."

In Texas, vote harvesting is a felony charge.

With such a diverse amount of non-English-proficient Houston AAPI voters, finding volunteers who could help translate the diversity of AAPI languages was already tough, but Chen said the law has made it even tougher. 

"It makes community organizations, volunteers, afraid," Chen said. "We don't want some high school or college student volunteers coming and potentially getting a criminal record because of this."

According to experts, other stipends of the law, such as a ban on drive-through ballots and sharper regulations on mail-in ballots, have also placed barriers disproportionately impacting voters of color. Specifically for AAPI voters, an APIA data survey found that 46 percent of Asian American voters prefer voting by mail or dropping their ballots off instead of voting in person.

Despite these ever-growing challenges, advocates are, above all, hopeful, especially for this election. 

"There's a lot of people who don't think the AAPI community is a community that comes out and votes, but we have seen a steady growth in the number of AAPIs that have come to vote regularly since 2012," Chen said. "This year… I think a lot of people are going to turn out this time too.” 

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