Confused about redistricting? NC Asian American groups host event on how to get involved

A North Carolina Asian American advocacy group wants to demystify the legislative redistricting process and encourage the fast-growing electorate to get involved.

North Carolina Asian Americans Together and APIA Vote will hold a training session over Zoom from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Thursday.

“The redistricting process impacts our democracy for the next 10 years,” said Ricky Leung, the senior director of programs at NCAAT.

“It’s important for our Asian American communities in North Carolina to get involved, because the 2020 Census has shown that it’s one of the fastest growing racial demographics in the state,” he said.

There are fewer than 200,000 Asian American voters in North Carolina, The News & Observer has reported, but they vote.

In 2020 Asian American voters had a 72% turnout rate, The N&O reported, just below that of white voters but above the rates for Black or Hispanic voters.

Leung said he knows redistricting can feel like “there’s this nebulous process of someone is drawing some maps and then it somehow affects our democracy.”

The training will go over the basics of what redistricting means, the timeline for it in North Carolina and how the process impacts local communities.

The virtual crash course will also feature hands-on mapping for participants, helping them learn to use the tool Representable to draw their own conceptions of what a fair map might look like.

“With these maps, it’s a way to get folks thinking about their communities,” Leung said. “And as an advocacy tool, we’re hoping for these maps to help folks think about how to talk to our legislators about what makes our communities important.”

While more than a dozen public hearings were held on redistricting last month, Leung said many of these were inaccessible to some members of the community.

“Some of them were during times where people were at work,” he said. “We felt that public hearing process was not as robust as it could be in soliciting comments.”

The training will advise people on how they can continue to voice concerns to elected officials, either through the legislature’s online comment portal, or by contacting their representatives.

In his own public comment, Leung had said he and NCAAT were concerned about the level of transparency, asking for legislators to provide more advance notice for public hearings, different times that were more accessible for those with jobs, more direct efforts to solicit public comment and input from Asian American communities and other communities of color, as well as interpretations of hearings and opportunities to testify in languages other than English.

In August, state legislators adopted rules prohibiting the use of racial demographic and election data in informing how maps are drawn this year, The News & Observer reported.

“We think that that is a mistake, to not consider racial data at all,” Leung said. “In order to be compliant to the Voting Rights Act, there is some assessment that needs to be made by the legislative committee on how racial minorities could be impacted by this process.”

The event will also cover how to talk to others about redistricting and get them involved, particularly those in the Asian American community.

“We did some research into: What are some messages that resonate with our communities?” Leung said. “How do we talk to our communities about the redistricting process? What issues are important to us?”

Interested participants can register at: https://bit.ly/3vfmaCt.

For those who are unable to attend the Thursday training, Leung said NCAAT will be holding future events and releasing additional resources on its social media.

This story was originally published October 14, 2021 at 4:41 PM with the headline "Confused about redistricting? NC Asian American groups host event on how to get involved."