Translator Christie Yang (left) at a Philadelphia polling station on Nov. 8, 2022. Philadelphia joined several other US cities in offering new multilingual voting information and assistance this Election Day.
Photograph: Amy Yee
How to Reach New Asian American Voters? Local Groups and Languages
Under federal law, Philadelphia offered Chinese-language help in midterm elections as community organizations worked to boost turnout of AAPI voters.
In the waning hours of US midterm elections last week, a Chinese American couple in their 70s in Philadelphia’s Chinatown voted for the third time in their lives. They were eager to do so, but Cun Jun Zheng and Shu Xiang Wang needed help to cast their ballots.
They speak limited English, so they’d been in touch with Wei Chen, 32, civic engagement director with Philadelphia nonprofit Asian Americans United (AAU). Chen is trilingual and fluent in Fujianese, the Chinese dialect the couple speak. At the voting booth, he walked them through instructions and helped them navigate the touch-screen machine, as is permitted under federal law.