New York, NY, April 18 — The Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF), a New York-based national civil rights organization, will dispatch attorneys and volunteers to document voter problems and the availability of language assistance on Election Day, April 19, in New York City.
In addition to the New York Democratic and Republican presidential primaries, there is a special election in Lower Manhattan for the 65th A.D. seat formerly held by ex-Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, who was convicted on federal corruption charges last November.
AALDEF will also conduct a nonpartisan bilingual exit poll to get a snapshot of Asian American candidate preferences, party enrollment, and issues of significance to Asian American voters at polling places in Manhattan’s Chinatown and Lower East Side. The exit poll results will be released Tuesday evening.
AALDEF’s poll monitoring efforts have taken on heightened significance in light of the Supreme Court decision in Shelby v. Holder, which weakened the preclearance provisions of the Voting Rights Act. AALDEF successfully used the preclearance process in the past to secure bilingual ballots for Chinese American voters and challenge voting barriers faced by Asian New Yorkers.
AALDEF will monitor the November 2016 elections at polling places in 14 states and conduct a multilingual exit poll of Asian American voters. In the 2012 presidential elections, AALDEF polled 9,096 Asian American voters in 14 states with large Asian American populations. AALDEF has conducted exit polls of Asian American voters and monitored polls in every major election since 1988.
