Ranked choice voting protects often-overlooked Asian American voting rights
May is Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month, offering an opportunity to discuss the AAPI community’s current level of representation in our government and the reforms that could advance fair representation for AAPI voters.
In discussions of voting rights, Asian Americans are often overlooked, but Asian American voters are mostly locked out of electing candidates of their choice. Of the 435 US House districts, there are just two with an Asian American majority. This represents less than 1% of House districts, compared to the nearly 5% of eligible voters who are Asian American.
Traditionally in the U.S., minority voting rights have been protected by drawing single-member majority-minority districts. This means that in order to receive representation, Asian American voters need to live in a single area in sufficiently large numbers to surpass 50% of the vote in a district. Since Asian Americans only make up 5% of the population nationally, this high threshold mostly locks Asian American voters out of representation.
The Fair Representation Act (FRA) would lower this burdensome requirement and allow Asian American voters to elect more candidates of their choice. The FRA would transform most single-winner House districts to larger three- to five-seat districts in which more communities are able to elect a candidate of their choice. Under the FRA, it would only require 17% of the vote for a community to elect one representative of its choice in a five-member district, or 25% of the vote in a three-member district – a much easier threshold for sizable-but-non-majority or geographically dispersed Asian communities to meet. The proportional, multi-member districts of the FRA truly deliver both majority rule and minority voice.
For example, in California, we project that Asian Americans would gain the power to elect in five House seats, up from zero today:
Even in states where the Asian American population falls below the threshold to elect candidates of their choice, Asian Americans can be better represented in “coalition seats.” These are seats where no one racial group has sole power to elect, so different communities must work together to elect a candidate of their choice.
Take Virginia, for example. In FairVote’s sample FRA map, Virginia’s 2nd District has an Asian American population of 13.3% – a few percentage points short of the 17% threshold in a 5-member district. It would take just a small number of voters from other groups to coalesce with the AAPI community in order to elect a candidate of choice.
Proportional ranked choice voting (RCV), the key component of the FRA, can also help protect voting rights in local elections. In Albany, California, the adoption of proportional RCV has supported better representation of minority groups. In a city with a significant AAPI population, Asian American candidate John Anthony Miki was elected in the city’s first proportional RCV election last fall, providing the community with new representation on the city council.
Single-winner ranked choice voting has also increased AAPI representation by lowering the barrier for candidates to run, as candidates do not need to worry about splitting the vote with members of the same community. Many jurisdictions that pioneered RCV in the US, such as San Francisco, New York City and Oakland, have large Asian American populations that have received more fair representation as a result.
For example, in a 2020 San Francisco Board of Supervisors election, Chinese American candidates Connie Chan and David Lee told their supporters to rank the other candidate second to prevent splitting support within their bloc of voters. In the end, Chan won, with the help of second-choice support from Lee’s voters.
In 2021, when New York City used RCV for the first time, a wave of Asian Americans ran for city council seats, resulting in five new Asian American city councilors being elected. This brought the proportion of Asian American city councilors roughly in line with the proportion of Asian Americans living in New York City. There were significant steps forward in representation for the diversity of Asian American ethnic groups within New York City, including the election of the first two Korean American city councilors, the first Bangladeshi American city councilor, and the first Indian American city councilor. Exit polling revealed that 89% of Asian American voters in NYC found RCV easy to use.
This month, one of the ways we can support the Asian American community is by promoting fair representation. Ranked choice voting and the Fair Representation Act are powerful reforms that can protect Asian American voting rights and ensure Asian Americans have the power to elect candidates of their choice.
