By Carolyn Bick
NORTHWEST ASIAN WEEKLY
Between the SAVE America Act—a bill that would restrict voting that is once again on the table—and the U.S. Supreme Court dismantling key portions of the Voting Rights Act, Quyên Dinh is worried.
“It is absolutely concerning. When we see attacks on voting rights coming from the president, Congress, and now from the courts, it tells us it’s not one isolated fight. It is a broader effort to make it harder for communities of color to participate fully in our democracy,” said Dinh, the executive director of the Southeast Asia Resource Action Center (SEARAC).
The Voting Rights Act
The center followed the Supreme Court’s April 6-3 decision to strip the 60-year-old Voting Rights Act of its most important parts, rendering it toothless. Among the provisions no longer included in the Voting Rights Act is a prohibition on voting practices that discriminate by race, language, or color.
The ruling also restricts race-conscious district maps, which will make it difficult-to-impossible to challenge racially discriminatory maps, or protect majority-minority districts. Since the ruling, several states have redrawn their district maps in the months leading up to this year’s elections.
“The Voting Rights Act has helped our Southeast Asian American and AANHPI communities overcome language barriers and make sure our votes actually reflect our priorities. It also has been one of the few protections against political maps that split our neighborhoods apart and weaken our collective voice,” she continued. “When those protections are stripped away, it becomes easier for politicians to decide whose voices matter and whose don’t.”
For the last 20 years, the AAPI electorate has been among the fastest-growing group of voters in the U.S., Dinh said. Disenfranchisement through gutting the Voting Rights Act will have serious consequences for AAPI voters, especially those who live in states with large AAPI communities like Washington.
“It’s been shown that in state after state, the number of Asian American voters is larger than the margin of victory in many of these major elections. For Southeast Asian Americans in particular, places with large enclaves of Cambodian, Hmong, Lao, Vietnamese, and others … are vulnerable when Voting Rights Act protections are weakened,” Dinh explained. “Our Southeast Asian American communities have spent 50 years building civic power and electing candidates who understand our experiences. For us and other communities of color, disenfranchisement is about the loss of visibility. It’s about being less able to shape the decisions impacting our communities.”
The SAVE America Act
The SAVE America Act presents yet another challenge for AAPI voters, particularly those who are immigrants or refugees, and have become naturalized citizens.
President Donald Trump attempted to get the legislature to pass the SAVE America Act earlier this year. Among other provisions, it would require a person to link their photo identification to their birth certificate, and make voting by mail—a secure practice—almost impossible.
The first iteration of the bill passed the House, but ultimately officially failed in the Senate in June.
But it’s back—and this time it’s tied to the country’s defense spending bill, which funds conservative aims, including renaming the Department of Defense the Department of War. It once again passed the House—though, this time, in a tight vote, with six Democrats helping Republicans win by casting yes votes, making for the majority vote against seven Republicans who voted against it—and is currently up for debate in the Senate.
Washington state has a large portion of voters who vote by mail. Washington’s secretary of state, Steve Hobbs, spent time early this year speaking out against the SAVE America Act, noting its supporters’ false claims about voter fraud and election security.
“I’d say it’s a bad name, SAVE Act. More like Voter Suppression Act,” Hobbs told the Northwest Asian Weekly in April. “It really saves nothing, and it’s hugely damaging to our state, which is a vote-by-mail state.”
For one, he said that the act requires that a voter have a copy of their photo identification for their ballot which itself is an obstacle.
“Let’s say election time’s coming up, you’re going to have to photocopy your ID and just show it in the ballot along with your actual ballot. Well, here’s the problem: How many people have copy machines?” Hobbs questioned. “And then you also have the problem of, what are we supposed to do with all these copies of identification?”
He also addressed the act’s requirement that a person be able to link their birth certificate to their photo identification. This creates obstacles to voting for people who have changed their name for any reason or who do not have a birth certificate available, including through marriage or if a refugee has become a citizen after fleeing their country of birth.
Finally, he said, “States don’t have to and shouldn’t have to give up their entire voter database along with private information to the federal government.”
Since the spring of 2025, the Trump administration has repeatedly pressured states to hand over voter rolls, which contain private information, with the Federal Bureau of Investigation even going so far as to hold back information from a judge, and rely on debunked conspiracy theory claims to obtain judicial warrants.
“The president’s aim is to create this mistrust, to create apathy, to create legal support for these previously very fringe theories all towards the goal of giving him more control,” said Washington Attorney General Nick Brown.
The administration has continued the practice of demanding voter rolls, and has ramped up efforts in advance of midterm elections in November. Washington state is currently defending against a lawsuit from the Department of Justice demanding that the state hand over its voter database.
Brown said that he believes what Trump is doing is, in effect, moving the needle of what the American public will accept, via small, incremental erosions of rights and liberties against the backdrop of his bombastic and divisive rhetoric.
For instance, he said, the idea that birthright citizenship could ever be challenged used to be a fringe political theory. “It wasn’t a serious legal theory that judges or scholars or litigators gave any credence to. It sort of existed down in the gallows of fringe legal theories for a while and then gained more and more steam with people who were close to the president.”
“And then, all of a sudden, it became the president’s very first executive order at the start of his second term,” Brown continued. He said it was “crazy” that most Republicans appear to be backing Trump’s attempts to take away states’ constitutionally protected control of elections.
“Can you imagine if [former President] Barack Obama had proposed such a thing and what they would be saying now, at this moment?” he said. “The second most active political voice in the state of Washington, the state Republican Party, also believes that Donald Trump won the 2020 election. They say that publicly. They believe the SAVE America Act should be passed. They believe that you should have nationalized voting control. And all of those things are just a real 180 from their prior positions.”
“I don’t know what problem they’re trying to solve,” Hobbs said of the SAVE Act. “Our state is very clear: We check out every signature and that signature is tied to your ID. That’s why we have you sign your ballot. That’s why we have a voter database that has all those signatures. If your signature doesn’t match, guess what? Your ballot’s not going to be counted and you’ll be notified that you need to update your signature.”
He said that the state has caught people who have signed others’ ballots, but it’s usually not malicious or someone intent on voter fraud—think a first-time, 18-year-old voter forgetting to sign their ballot, so a parent does it for them; or a person who has just lost their spouse.
“They vote for their loved one. That’s a sad situation, but we have caught those before,” he said.
He also highlighted that the administration and the Republican party appear to be stoking unfounded fears by scapegoating China and Chinese Americans.
For instance, in Washington state, Bill Bruch, a WAGOP Election Integrity Committee chair and a failed Republican challenger in the 2020 election for Position 2 in District 10, posted about a stack of abandoned ballots that WAGOP State Chairman and state Rep. Jim Walsh obtained and sorted through. Walsh’s video on the issue is no longer available, but his post on X about it is.
Bruch claimed in his post that the names alone on the list of ballots pointed to election fraud, and highlighted that most of the names on the ballots were Central Asian or specifically Chinese.
“What did we get?” he wrote. “A FOREIGN NAME LIST WITH VERY DISTINCT SUSPICIOUS PATTERNS – where there should be none.”
“This is where I get very concerned, when you have an administration that is essentially rounding up people,” Hobbs said. “They want all of our voter rolls with the private information. What are they going to do with that? What’s the point of taking all of our voter databases with all that information?”
He also highlighted that the SAVE system—separate from the SAVE America Act—that is supposed to flag people who are not citizens, and are therefore ineligible to vote, is flawed. The system is riddled with errors, and has continued to mistakenly identify eligible citizens as ineligible to vote.
“Let’s say we were to do it in our state—I upload all that information,” he continued. “Who’s to say someone isn’t going to grab that and use it for whatever means possible? We already have systems in place. We communicate with other databases. We know when people sign for their ballot. We know when people pass away. We have caught people who have voted twice in the same election. We have all these systems in place.”
Hobbs believes that officials need to do a better job of informing people how states run elections, “and that’s our bad, and we are trying to change that.”
Brown said that he and other Democratic Attorneys General are meeting at least monthly to strategize for post-election scenarios, so that states can be prepared for what may happen in November.
A chilling effect
For Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders who are citizens and eligible to vote—especially those who were not born here and have become citizens through naturalization—the idea that the federal government could be specifically targeting immigrants has a chilling effect. Dinh said that harsh, anti-Asian, anti-immigrant rhetoric only serves to further increase the fear of civic participation amongst Asian American voters.
“It sends a clear message to our communities to keep quiet and stay out of public life,” she said. “Southeast Asian American families have lived through histories of state violence and persecution, and are now being impacted by detention and deportation. So when government actions make civic participation feel more risky, our people feel that deeply.”
Extra logistical hurdles also send AAPI voters the message that their voices aren’t wanted or welcome in elections, because it makes the overall process exhausting in a way that feels intentional.
“Even when people are fully eligible to vote, that process just becomes more cumbersome, confusing, or even intimidating. And for communities where language is already a barrier, every extra step can mean fewer people participating in the democratic process,” Dinh said.
That mail-in voting is also under attack is another clear signal to AAPI voters that they don’t matter. Mail-in voting reduces the barriers these communities otherwise face when going to a polling station in person, or carving out time in their day to vote. Dinh said that the data shows that AAPI communities tend to vote by mail more than other communities, especially elders, who may not have an easy way to get to a polling station, or those who work multiple jobs.
“[Mail-in voting] matters for people who need language support from trusted family members or community-based organizations,” she continued. “In reality, for many [Southeast Asian American] families, voting is not a quick or simple process as it is for other communities, but mail-in voting helps to equalize the conditions to vote.”
Last year marked the 50th year since refugees came to the U.S., following the end of the war in Vietnam.
“Over those five decades, our communities have helped build neighborhoods, schools, and civic life across the country. Congress must restore and strengthen voting protections so Southeast Asian American communities and all communities of color can continue building the political voice generations before us fought hard to create,” Dinh said. “Our communities have been here before. We have made progress because people organized and fought to be heard. Southeast Asian Americans have stood alongside other communities of color for decades. That kind of solidarity is how we got here, and it is how we move forward.”
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