First-ever Asian American-Pacific Islander California voter guide released

Asian American and Pacific Islander voters in California have a new resource to help them decide how to vote on some of the propositions on the November ballot.

It's a voter guide compiled by 22 California organizations, like the South Asian Network and the Korean Resource Center, in their efforts to increase voting among hard to reach, and infrequent Asian voters.

It is available online at http://www.18millionrising.org/voterguide/ and it’s also being sent to households.

The guide includes background on all the statewide propositions of interest to the AAPI community, including Proposition 30 on education funding, but also others dealing with human trafficking and a measure to abolish the death penalty.

Since the death penalty was reinstated in the late 1970s, California has spent $4 billion to execute only 13 people," said Clarissa Woo, director of Policy Advocacy at the ACLU of Southern California. "We literally waste billions of taxpayer dollars on only a few convicted killers while police officers all over the state are being laid off.”

The Asian Pacific American Legal Center, which pushed this statewide effort, says 86 percent of those already reached say they will vote this election. Nearly early 30,000 Asians and Pacific Islanders nationwide have been reached by phone and in person as part of the effort.