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When the elections begin this week in Chicago, Indian-Americans and other South Asian voters will likely show up in larger numbers at polling places to cast their ballots than in the past.
Community leaders, and officials involved in the electoral process, say this time South Asians seem to be taking a lot more interest in exercising their franchise thanks to a vigorous grassroots-level campaign to educate voters about the importance of casting their votes.
Indications of voters’ interest came last week at a pre-election voter education and outreach, conducted by the office of the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners in Northside. At that Nov. 1 forum several members of the community, including senior citizens, sat through the evening meeting addressed among others by Patrick J. O’Connor, 40th Ward Alderman, Ameya Pawar, 47th Ward Alderman and Robert Murphy, 39th Ward Democratic Committeeman.
“The idea was to get voters sit face to face with local officials they know. The discussions focused on the importance of getting our voices heard by exercising our right to vote as well as informing the community members, who are not proficient in English, that there will be bilingual election judges to help them cast votes, and people evidently took interest in learning about the voting process,” Shobhana Johri Verma, director, South Asian Outreach at Chicago Board of Election Commissioners, said.
Chicago with over 43,000 people of South Asian origin, according to the census data, has the third largest South Asian population, but the numbers have not always translated into votes because voter registration numbers has remained low partly due to apathy of Indian-Americans and other South Asians to the political process and partly due to ignorance about their power to change policies and programs through votes.
Verma, through the outreach program, sought to change that attitude since she took charge as the outreach director in 2014. She engaged in conversation with the community round the year encourage embers of the community to take part in the political process. “For me the idea was not just to encourage them to vote but also inspire them to talk to others to vote and emphasize why it was important to exercise their franchise. As a result I not only spoke at various community gatherings, school and college campuses, but also worked with various faith-based organizations, cultural centers to cover as much ground as I could,” Verma told Desi Talk.
One of the positive results of the year-long engagement has been the increase in voters’ registration this year. Although Verma could not provide any number, she said going by the number of people who have come for registering their names as voters in the past six months or so, there definitely has been an increase in the number of South Asians wanting to vote. “Another indication of rise in general interest in the political process is that we had over 120 applications this year to work as poll judges, who are bilingual and speak Hindi, Urdu, Gujarati or Bengali in 56 locations in Chicago, compared to just 10 such people when I came on board. So the interest level has gone up,” Verma said.
That the interest level in the elections this year has gone up is also attested by people like Rajinder Singh Mago, a community leader and co-founder of the Palatine-based Punjabi Cultural Society of Chicago.
“Definitely, interest of people from our community in the elections this year is much more than I have even seen in Chicago,” Mago who has been a resident of Chicago for over 40 years, and recently organized a bipartisan meeting of the two congressional candidates from the 9th congressional district, including Democrat Raja Krishnamoorthi, said.
He said besides campaign for voting by various nonprofit groups and outreach efforts by the board of election commissioners what has energized the community to actively take part in the election is the fact that Krishnamoorthi is a congressional candidate.
“After Duckworth (Congresswoman Tammy Duckworth) Krishnamoorthi is the only Asian candidate, and Indian-Americans as well other Asian-Americans are very excited at the prospect of another Asian going to Congress from this part of the country. That is why there is a palpable increase in voter registration and expected large turnout of South Asian voters on the Election Day,’ he said.
The post Larger Turnout Of South Asian Voters Expected In This Election appeared first on News India Times.