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Race and ethnicity data often reveals where Oregon's inequities lie. But if this data isn't collected, disparities become nearly invisible.
That's what two proposed Oregon House bills hope to change.
House Bill 2745 would add space on voter registration forms for residents to voluntarily fill in their race, ethnicity and household language. The information would become a matter of public record. House Bill 3021 would ask the Oregon secretary of state to publicize the top five most spoken languages in the state and then require the agency to translate the Voters' Pamphlet into these languages online.
State Rep. Khanh Pham (D-Portland) sponsored the bills. During public testimony, she pointed out how race data is collected in health care and education, among other services, to combat inequities but not in the voting process.
"We need to do the same for voters," she says, "so they know their democracy is working for all, not just the privileged."
"Right now, because we do not collect this data, we do not have a clear picture of how well voting populations across the state are served by the systems we have," Pham continues.
Michele Ruffin, political director for the racial justice advocacy group Forward Together Action, says the bills are important for two reasons. First, they would allow nonprofits like FTA to target voter outreach to registered voters of color. Second, over the long term, the data would expose any racial disparities throughout the state.
"What we suspect is that minorities have different voter preferences than white folks, and we want to be able to see where there are disparities," Ruffin says. "This comes from the vision of and the input of student organizers and student organizers of color."
Ruffin said she led a canvassing group a couple of years ago that would collect this demographic data and found that people were forthcoming about providing that information.
"In our conversations, we ran into folks who said it would be nice to have specialized outreach," Ruffin says. "People said, 'I've lived here for 10 years and no one's knocked on my door, thank you.' We continue to find that people are ready for that engagement."
The bills would help community groups to target Oregonians whose first language is not English, or who are often overlooked by huge campaigns because either they haven't voted in a while or don't live in a desired neighborhood, Ruffin said.
"When we focus very heavily on voters of color, we find that's how you win elections, that's how folks feel more engaged," Ruffin says. "The bill is important to me because I think about all of those conversations we had over time. The state could be finding out good nuggets of information."