With a live DJ and iced matcha tea, organizers woke up voters — both young and old — at the Desert Breeze Community Center in Las Vegas, Nevada, on Tuesday afternoon.
The event, organized by One APIA Nevada and the Asian Community Development Council (ACDC), a non-partisan non-partisan organization supporting Nevada’s Asia-Pacific communities, was intended to guide voters in Asia and the Pacific. Peaceful in the area at the polls, the groups said. .
“The traditional narrative is that Asians always have a voting apathy,” said Eric Zheng, director of approach for the ACDC, who at 33 said he was the group’s oldest organizer.
“We want to break this cycle of apathy,” Jeng told CNN.
The ACDC aims to educate and mobilize voters in an area where the Asia-Pacific community is growing.
A DJ plays at the event on Tuesday. (Rachel Janfaza / CNN)
In the run-up to Tuesday’s by-elections, the ACDC has translated non-partisan voter guides into five languages: Chinese, Korean, Tagalog, Vietnamese and Thai.
Ashley Hermosura, a 33-year-old Democratic voter, told CNN she knew how to vote Tuesday because she was following One APIA on social media.
In addition to posting on social media for weeks, the group knocked on doors and sent text messages, encouraging community members to vote.
“The Republican Party has a lot of appeal,” Hermosura said, explaining that she had appeared to vote for Democratic-backed union candidates and board members.
Ermosura said she believed in “the Asian vote in the elections and appearing as a politically active public in the elections.”
Catherine Lee, who is 18 years old and voted in the Nevada primaries, described the voting experience for the first time as “cool”.
Lee, who voted at another event hosted by the groups last Friday, said she was very excited about the vote in the district attorneys’ race.
“They are making significant strides in combating racial discrimination in the criminal justice system,” Lee said, describing why she found this race interesting.
