http://www.nynewsday.com/news/local/manhattan/nyc-nyvote073883627jul07,0,6254785.story

ASIAN-AMERICAN STUDY

Right to vote was hindered

By Robert Polner, Staff Writer

July 7, 2004

For Asian-American voters, the 2003 elections in the city echoed with the jangled chords of the Florida presidential election debacle, an advocacy group charges in a report to be released today.

New Yorkers from China and Korea were sometimes met at voting booths by "rude" and "hostile" poll workers, improper requests for identification and a lack of interpreters, according to the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund report.

The 33-page study of poll obstacles in the 2003 primary and general election was based on a survey of about 1,000 Asian-American voters at 70 polling sites and unsolicited calls to a multi-lingual hotline run by the group.

"Like many minority voters in Florida in 2000," according to the analysis, "Asian Americans in New York City encountered a range of discriminatory barriers when they exercise their right to vote."

John Ravitz, executive director of the city's Board of Elections, called the findings inaccurate, saying Asian-Americans faced no significant barriers.

He said the group's researchers should have called him or other members of his staff on the day of an election to immediately flag any voting barriers.

"We don't want any barriers in the way," Ravitz said.

The report found pervasive problems.

Poll workers, it said, were "rude, hostile or made disparaging remarks about language assistance and Asian American voters."

Translations of voting-machine instructions were sometimes posted in obscure places, and only one in three interpreters showed. At a few locations, ballots had not been translated, as required by law.

About 1 in 10 voters surveyed by the organization said they had been asked by a poll worker to show identification, the report said. Others were left off voter registration lists.

Copyright 2004, Newsday, Inc.

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