Lawsuits under New York’s new voting rights law reveal racial disenfranchisement even in blue states

FREEPORT, N.Y. (AP) — Weihua Yan had seen dramatic demographic changes since moving to Long Island’s Nassau County.

Its Asian American population alone had grown by 60% since the 2010 census. Why then, he wondered, did he not see anyone who looked like him on the county’s local governing body, the 19-member Nassau County Legislature?

Last year, he decided to do something about it and ran for one of the seats. He pulled together a campaign team that knocked on 10,000 doors and developed what they believed would be a solid strategy — focusing on their potential base: white Democrats and people of color, especially Asian voters.

The strategy worked to drive voter turnout, but it didn’t help Yan win. His bid to become the first Asian American on the county’s governing body fell short, and he thinks he knows why.

Minority residents and voter advocates blame a redistricting process overseen by the county Legislature, which has a Republican majority. They say the county political map drawn after the 2020 census was done to mostly preserve the existing power structure, and in doing so prevented minority voters from electing a board that was more representative of the area’s burgeoning diversity.

The county is now facing a lawsuit over those maps. Four Latino residents and a local civil rights organization sued the Legislature earlier this year, claiming it manipulated the mapmaking process to dilute the influence of the county’s Black, Latino and Asian communities. Whites are just 56% of the county’s nearly 1.4 million people but comprise nearly 80% of its governing body.

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