Blog

By Stuart J. Sia

This year, my mom voted from the Philippines. In California, where she lives, military and overseas voters can register to fill out their ballot online, print it out, and fax it in—three steps to make your voice heard and ensure your vote is counted.

My mom immigrated to the U.S. in the early 80s as a nurse, filling a vital gap in health workers that America was facing at the time. My dad came a decade earlier as a graduate student, eventually becoming a professor. He was already a citizen by the time he met my mom (his date—set up by a mutual friend—to a faculty Christmas party). My mom didn’t intend to stay in the U.S. She was, and remains, very close with her family back in the Philippines. Though it was hard being away from the family that raised her, she ended up choosing to stay here and raised a family of her own.

Now that she’s retired and her kids are scattered across the country, she spends a few months each year in the Philippines. This most recent trip coincided with a very important election that she wasn’t going to miss out on. She called my sister and said, “Of course, I have to vote! How can I do that from here?” 

We knew voting from the Philippines would take a bit of effort, but it wasn’t impossible. Fortunately, we learned that she qualified to vote overseas as “A U.S. citizen residing outside the U.S. temporarily.” And I was glad to see the form was available in several languages, including Chinese, Hindi, Japanese, Khmer, Korean, Tagalog, Thai and Vietnamese. My mom filled out the registration form, and the next day, she was sent an online ballot via email.

My family jumped on a video call to research the issues and to vote together. Mom had us on her phone and had the online ballot in front of her on the computer. Dad pulled out his mail-in ballot, which California automatically sends to every voter, to follow along and fill out from their home in suburban Los Angeles. Mom was a bit confused about how the form worked, so we walked her through it as she shared her screen with us. We went through the ballot, page by page, looking up candidates and viewing their campaign pages. And with the local propositions, we read through the descriptions, looked up endorsements we trusted, and made our best assessment of how to vote.

It was fun, and something I had missed doing since moving across the country over a decade ago. My early years as a voter and a young adult, I had enjoyed going together to our polling place as a family. I grew up in what was then a predominantly white suburb of LA. The very act of showing up and voting as a family felt empowering. My parents were proud of us for being civically engaged and fiercely activist about the issues important to us. And my siblings and I were proud of our parents for navigating this country unapologetically—brown skin, accents, and all. So though today I voted in the Bronx, I was glad to have been able to help my parents vote a continent and an ocean away.

Voting is harder than it should be. And not everyone in our community has the right to vote. Whether citizen or not, documented or not, there are 24 million Asians who call this country home. When we vote, it has an impact on all of us. If you can vote, you should. If my mom can do it from the Philippines, you can do it from here.