By Madison Morgan
NORTHWEST ASIAN WEEKLY
When it comes to civic engagement, 47% of Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) voters say AAPI-serving organizations are their most trusted messengers.
The United Territories of Pacific Islanders Alliance (UTOPIA) Washington, a queer and trans people of color-led, grassroots organization, is putting that trust into action. From Oct. 21-23, UTOPIA ran its Get Out the Vote program, mobilizing volunteers to conduct phone and text banking ahead of November’s general election. Participants connected directly with voters, shared election information, answered questions about how and where to vote, and encouraged community participation.
“It takes a village, and now the village needs the entire village,” said Adrianna Suluai, UTOPIA’s policy and advocacy director.
Suluai has been with UTOPIA for seven years and has volunteered with the organization since 2009. She emphasized that civic engagement should not happen only during election season. Instead, it should be year-round work that keeps communities informed about candidates, ballot initiatives, and policies affecting their daily lives.
“Civic engagement empowers a lot of our community to … be active in … decisions that are currently impacting their lives,” she said.
For UTOPIA, getting people to vote means addressing multiple barriers head-on. In addition to things like language access needs, transportation hurdles, and persistent disinformation, voters of color in the state are more likely to have their ballot challenged for signature issues. Many community members also don’t know where their polling stations are, what ID they need, or when registration deadlines fall. Others face language access challenges or work schedules that make voting difficult.
UTOPIA’s outreach workers provide culturally relevant information in a trusted environment, and share their personal identities and their own voting experiences with the voters they contact.
According to APIAVote’s 2026 data, the AAPI population in Washington state has grown 54.4% since 2014. AAPIs now represent 1.19 million residents and make up 11.6% of the state’s electorate—the fifth-highest share in the nation. In King County alone, 254,365 AAPI residents are eligible to vote, making up 16.26% of the county’s electorate.
But for Suluai, success for Get Out the Vote is more than just numbers.
“Success looks like when you start to hear everyday conversations start to shift with how people continue to want to be engaged in the voting process,” Suluai said. “When you start to hear them talk more about ballots, about access to care and resources, about current policies—those everyday conversations where they’re informed.”
This approach is particularly vital for the communities UTOPIA serves. As a queer and trans people of color-led organization, UTOPIA operates at the intersection of multiple marginalized identities.
“We’re a minority group within a minority group within a minority group,” Suluai said. “When you see people who look and think and practice culture like you, you feel at home, and you feel safe.”
This year, two ballot initiatives in Washington state directly target transgender youth—the same community UTOPIA serves through its youth programs.
One of the initiatives, Initiative 638 (I-638)—also known as the “Sex Verification Requirements for Female School Sports Initiative”—requires that schools and nonprofits perform invasive medical inspections on students to verify whether they are biologically female, in order to be eligible for school sports. The initiative also requires the students’ doctors to submit a note verifying their biological sex.
The other, Initiative 001 (IL26-001) seeks to restore the Parents’ Bill of Rights. However, several organizations have argued that the provisions contained within would undermine a young person’s ability to report abuse at home, or to be able to confide in a trusted adult, such as a school counselor, about any challenges they are facing. This could prove especially harmful for LGBTQ+ youth.
The initiative could also prevent parents from knowing immediately if their child has been a victim of a serious crime. This past summer, a survey found that LGBTQ+ teens reported feeling significantly more hopeless and faced more bullying than their peers.
“When we start to see policies that continue to impact our daily lives, that is a call for us to be in action,” said Suluai. She is active with the No Hate in Washington State statewide political campaign against these two initiatives. “If you’re not voting for yourself, vote for your family member who might be LGBTQ+, for your trans neighbor who helps you with your groceries.”
But UTOPIA’s work extends beyond election season. The organization hosts community town halls where residents can hear directly from candidates, partners with other Asian American, Native Hawai’ian, and Pacific Islander-focused organizations for voter education forums, and integrates voting information into regular programming through tabling events and community gatherings.
“For our community to be empowered and engaged, it’s important that these opportunities or this education or community engagement pieces [be] year-round,” Suluai said. “That’s how the community continues to know who they’re voting for and also what initiatives and bills are coming on their ballots that they should pay attention to.”
For more information on the Nov. 3 elections, voters can visit vote.wa.gov.
Leave a Reply