Group A | Project Brief
Maribel Gray Kelsey Scherer Passent Saad Gaby Bonilla July Ospina Celie Yann Daniel Redfern
PROJECT BRIEF Group A Elevator Pitch Our campaign aspires to increase registration and voting within Virginia’s diverse Asian-American population by emphasizing the benefits of voting to individuals and their communities. Through collaboration, personal networks, and social media, this campaign will promote the message that voting is more than a civic duty—it’s a way for this community to make a difference. We will energize a growing team of “evangelists” to advocate the importance of voting to others.
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Group A | Project Brief
Strategies and Tactics Partner with local, regional, and national organizations involved with the AsianAmerican community to utilize their networks . Tactics: Voter drives at high density locations (e.g. colleges, universities, senior centers, places of worship, etc.) Create political activists who will act as evangelists for our cause. Employ an interactive educational approach highlighting the benefits individuals receive when voting. Tactics: Design marketing materials that explain the process of registration and voting to make it accessible to all ethnicities. The marketing materials will explain the benefits of voting in a clear and concise manner. Enhance loyalty to our campaign and encourage advocacy to others. Tactics: Identify issues that would resonate with the Asian-American community in order to connect emotionally with our audience. Tell stories that will engage our audience, reinforcing the personal connection, and emphasize the unique issues that Asian Americans experience. Show how civic participation is an opportunity to gain social equality. Overcome the language barrier facing some Asian-Americans. Tactics: Provide translations of marketing material in print and on the web. Recruit bilingual or multilingual volunteers in the community to spread our message. Develop a campaign that can be used as a model that can be scaled to national level. Tactics: Focus on key areas relevant to our demographic and then scale it to the national level, targeting high density areas of Asian-Americans. Create a model for engaging specific Asian-American ethnicities within the diverse demographic that can be replicated in other communities.
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Group A | Project Brief
Overview As one of the fastest-growing minorities in the United States (U.S.), Asian-Americans represent a high-impact, yet challenging group when it comes to U.S. political and voting involvement. Between 2008 and 2050, the projected increase of U.S. individuals who identify themselves as Asian stands at 161%. Compared with a 44% increase in population as a whole over the same period, it is clear that AsianAmericans can have a lasting impact on U.S. politics for years to come.
However, despite these booming population projections, AsianAmericans are one of the most politically under-represented ethnic groups in the U.S. According to the National Census Bureau, AsianAmericans make up only 1% of elected officials. Although charitable organizations and individual giving have attempted to stimulate Asian-American political involvement, such efforts have failed to help Asian-American political participation in U.S. politics reach its full potential. With political decisions affecting avenues of life ranging from health coverage to child education, political awareness today has more meaning than ever. Realizing this ethnicity’s potential to impact U.S. politics and how political decisions affect the everyday lives of Americans, our goal is to develop a campaign to foster Asian-American political involvement in Virginia through interactive information sharing to ultimately breed a lasting community contribution, loyalty, and retention.
Demographics
Make-Up and Diversity The definition of Asian-American is broad, with variation regarding ethnic groups belonging to the demographic. This can often make it difficult to understand and delineate individual persons belonging to the group. As such, identifying the Asian-American community as a large, homogeneous community is both inaccurate and misleading. In many instances, the definition of an Asian-American depends on the source of information.
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Group A | Project Brief
Understanding cultural differences and divides across the nationalities above poses challenges, as well as potential, when building an initiative such as ours. On one hand, while a campaign effort may be successful with a particular cross-section of Asian-Americans, the same tactic may not resonate with another. The broad scope of what constitutes an Asian-American dictates that one must be intimately in-tune with the demographic and understand interests that cater to each group comprising it.
Communication Barriers There are thousands of Asian languages and dialects within the Asian American population. Providing a common means of communication for all Asian-Americans is challenging and intensive. Historically, many Asian exit poll respondents have encountered serious voting issues due to communication barriers, with hundreds of AsianAmerican voters being directed to the wrong poll site or in other cases being subject to racist remarks by poorly trained poll workers. In the 2004 elections, one in five of all respondents needed some form of language assistance in order to exercise their right to vote, either in the form of interpreters or translated written materials.
Asian American voters, despite diverse backgrounds and languages, voiced common concerns across ethnic lines—citing the economy and jobs as the most important factor in their vote for President, and civil liberties as the most important civil rights issue.
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Group A | Project Brief
US Population
A Prevalent and Growing Minority Currently, Asian-Americans account for 4.8% (14.7 million) of the total U.S. population. In the states of Maryland and Virginia alone, Asian-Americans account for approximately 5.5% of each state’s population. The state of Virginia is more populous, at 8 million, than that of Maryland at 5.8 million. The Asian-American population has undergone the second-largest numerical population change, growing from 10.2 million in 2000 to 14.7 million in 2010.
Potential in Virginia Virginia’s total population growth rate from 2000 to 2010 was 13%, ranking 13th in population size, 6th in population growth, and 16th in population growth rate as compared with other states. Virginia has undergone a tangible transformation over the past two decades with minorities playing an ever-increasing role in population dynamics. Asian-Americans, specifically, have been a significant contributor to Virginia’s minority growth since the late 1980s. In the 1990s, the Asian-American growth rate in Virginia was actually slightly higher than that of Hispanics. Their population growth gives this demographic a significant stake in Virginia’s economic and political future.
In terms of settlement, Asian-American populations have trended towards concentrating around urban and coastal areas. Not coincidentally, Virginia’s Asian-American population is also more heavily located around Virginia’s three large metropolitan statistical
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Group A | Project Brief
areas (MSAs): Northern Virginia, Richmond, and Hampton Roads. These hubs are key to the economic and political vitality of Virginia, as evidenced by the fact that 70% of Virginia residents live in these areas while accounting for 82% of the state’s population growth. However, despite a powerful presence in Virginia, Asian-Americans demonstrate a lack of political involvement. Moving forward, it is critical that methods be employed to not only understand the lack of ambition in this area, but also promote education and information sharing to highlight how an increased voter pool can enhance daily life and Virginia’s future for Asian-American generations to come.
Political Inactivity The lack of Asian-American activity in U.S. politics has been supported by an array of studies and acquired statistics. National census surveys of the Asian-American population in 2010 show that while almost 50% of Asian-Americans register to vote, only 31% actually reported voting. In Virginia, of the 363,000 Asian-Americans surveyed in 2010, only 43% registered to vote. Of those 43% who registered to vote in Virginia, only 17% actually followed through with a vote.
These numbers clearly highlight a deficiency in Asian-Americans voter registration, with a broad percentage failing to make their voice heard. While this may not seem pertinent in the grand scheme of all ethnicities in America, this gap signifies that the views, thoughts, and future direction of U.S. and Virginia politics are not being impacted by the full force of Asian-American community members.
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