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In the 2004 presidential elections, only 594,000 Filipino-Americans voted—a decline of 7 percent because 122,000 registered voters did not cast their ballots. “Potentially, there are 715,000 Filipino-Americans, or 40 percent of our total number, who can be mobilized to go to the polls,” says Gloria Caoile, co-chair of FilVote. “But we need to register them if they haven’t done so and educate them on issues that directly affect our community so they will appreciate what’s at stake, especially for our children and families.”
NaFFAA also has a very strong FilVote program, which not only aims to register Filipinos who are American citizens, but to make sure that they go out and vote.
APIA Vote, a national nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that encourages the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community to be involved in the elections, have organized with different Asian American groups nationwide to register as many members and inform them about the significance of their vote.
There are nearly 15 million AAPIs nationwide. During the 2004 presidential elections, seven million AAPIs were eligible to vote, half of that number registered and three million or 85 percent voted, according to statistics compiled by APIA Vote.
Obama or McCain?
The upcoming US Presidential elections, however, had slowly gotten more Filipinos and Asian Americans out of their shells. Also, candidates have taken the issues of AAPIs into consideration, and have accepted that their votes can make an impact on their possible future in the White House.
Democrat Senator Barack Obama released his Blueprint for the Change We Need for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, a comprehensive planning document that identifies the issues affecting the AAPI community and describes Sen. Obama’s plans to address these issues.
In the Blueprint, Senator Obama said “By reaching out directly to the AAPI communities, we can ensure that AAPIs are well represented in this national conversation about our future and the movement to write our destiny. The story of the AAPI communities is quintessential the American story about drawing strength from our diversity to achieve extraordinary things. I will be a president who remembers that our separate struggles are really one. I will never walk away from the tough battles or the difficult work of bringing people together.”
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