"I don’t like Bush," said Huang in Mandarin. "He went to war without considering ordinary people's lives in this country." Huang, a baking student at Laney College said she is forced to work reduced hours because of the cuts in college work-study programs. She blamed those on the Bush Administration.

Another voter named Feng, who declined to disclose his first time, spent more than 15 minutes gazing at the electronic voting machine. “I voted against everything asking for tax money from me,” said Feng, who owns a technology company. He said he voted for President George W. Bush.

Chinese Americans like Feng and Huang were the target of an aggressive grassroots voter registration drive and education campaign by Bay Area and national Chinese-American community organizations.
Signs indicate that Chinese-American voter turnout was likely to be higher this year. The number of Chinese language sample ballots requested in Alameda County jumped 30 percent from last year, according to the Registrar of Voters of Alameda County.

"The Chinese have surprised me," said Jacqueline Lam, the Chinese outreach coordinator at the Alameda County Registrar's office. "They show they're eager to vote. They are so concerned," Lam said.
However, final figures of the actual turnout won’t be available until the week of November 12.

In recent years, Chinese Americans have become a growing force in the political landscape in the Bay Area. Chinese-American voters, who cast one-fifth of the absentee ballots during last year’s San Francisco mayoral election, tilted the race by favoring Democratic candidate Gavin Newsom over the Green Party’s Matt Gonzales by two to one, said David Lee of the Chinese American Voter Education Committee. This year, 24 Chinese-Americans ran for public office in the Bay Area, according to the national Chinese-language newspaper World Journal.

But Chinese voters have been notoriously difficult to mobilize in the past elections. A study by the Public Policy Institute of California shows that during the 2000 election, the turnout rate of Asian Americans, the majority of whom are Chinese Americans, in California was 50 percent, compared to 74 percent among Caucasians.

Dozens of national and Bay Area Chinese-American community organizations have tried to reverse the trend through a systematic voter education and registration drive in this election.
C.C. Ying, the president of the Asian Pacific Islander American Political Association, a Sacramento-based voters education organization, said he wanted to make sure his members' concerns were addressed in this election. "Our vote should be counted," Ying said. "Our money should be counted, too."

Last month, 1,200 Asian-American voters and dozens of local and state politicians showed up at APAPA's annual voter registration conference.
East Bay Asian Voters Consortium, a joint effort by seven Bay Area Asian-American organizations reached more than 10,000 Asian Americans through their voter registration and education campaign, said Emily Cheng, a board member of the organization.

On the national level, the 80-20 Initiative, an internet-based organization, that claims the ability to reach 70 percent of Asian-American registered voters in 30 hours, urged its constituency to vote as a bloc for Kerry.

Ling-chi Wang, associate professor of Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley, cautioned that the turnout of Chinese American voters will still likely be lower than the general population this year. He said apathy toward politics is deeply rooted in the community because of the lack of democratic process in the home country and deprivation of early immigrants’ rights to participate in civic activities in the late 19th and early 20th century.

Wang also raised concerns about the impact of the voter mobilization campaigns on working-class Chinese Americans. He said most of the campaigns were organized by educated middle-class professionals. “In order to participate in 80/20, you have to have access to the Internet. The bottom half of Chinese Americans will not be able to participate,” he said.

Class also divides the Chinese community’s decision for president. A nationwide poll of Chinese Americans likely to vote, commissioned in March by the Chinese American Voters Education Committee showed that 62 percent of registered Chinese-American voters favored Kerry compared to 15 percent for President Bush. It reflected a similar schism in the Chinese-American community between the class of entrepreneurs and the working class.

Ying, an immigrant from Taiwan, who left his corporate job 20 years ago and joined the McDonald franchise to “fulfill the American dream,” now owns more than 20 McDonald restaurants in northern California. He cast his vote for President Bush. "We should have small government and small taxes. The society should encourage people to work hard and get reward for that," he said.