The Chinese American Woman Who Helped Pioneer Voting By Mail

California Secretary of State March Fong Eu was a trailblazer for Asian Americans and the electoral system we know today.

By Katie Goetz

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his year, California will mail every registered voter a ballot before the November 3 election to facilitate voting during the COVID-19 pandemic. Voters will be able to mail these ballots back or drop them off at polling stations. There is also an option for in-person voting.

I started voting by mail long before California decided to mail everyone a ballot. Years ago, I registered as a “permanent absentee voter” so I could vote when it was convenient for me.  While I appreciate being able to vote at home, I often took my ballot to a polling place to drop it off and receive an “I Voted” sticker. (Our county clerk’s office now includes “I Voted” stickers with mail-in ballots because everyone loves stickers.)

Being a permanent absentee voter meant that when I gave birth to my first child the day before the 2010 mid-term election, I didn’t have to figure out how to go vote twenty-four hours postpartum, when I had just been released from the hospital. 

March Fong Eu as California secretary of state. Public domain image.

While the option to be a permanent absentee voter began more recently, Californians have been able to request absentee ballots for any election, for any reason, or no reason at all, since the 1980s. Opening up the ballot box in this way originated with March Fong Eu. Fong Eu was the first Asian American woman ever elected to a state constitutional office in the US. She served as secretary of state in California in the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s, right up until she was appointed ambassador to Micronesia in 1994.

In addition to pioneering absentee voting for everyone in California, Fong Eu brought voter registration by mail and other election reforms to the state. She was among the first to post election results online. She also spent a lifetime speaking out for justice and women’s rights.

Once, she delayed her fellow assembly members from attending an all-male golf tournament that she was prohibited from joining by introducing a resolution “to end this crass discrimination.” In 1969, she made national news when she smashed a porcelain toilet with a sledgehammer on the steps of the California state capitol building to protest paid toilets in public buildings, which she considered an issue of gender fairness “because women must pay twice as often as men.” (Using urinals was free.)

Though I grew up in California while she was secretary of state, I only learned about Fong Eu a year ago. I learned about her commitment to making sure everyone could vote when I started researching Chinese American history, and particularly Chinese American women. I was looking for potential people after whom my children’s public-school Mandarin immersion program could be named.

Fong Eu died in 2017 at the age of ninety-five, and I’m sorry I didn’t learn about her sooner. I would have written her fan mail. Upon her death, then-California governor Jerry Brown said she “was a pioneering woman who helped open doors to public service for more women and Asian Americans.”

Born in 1922, Fong Eu was raised in the back of a Chinese laundry in San Francisco, California. She wanted to become a teacher, but a high school guidance counselor told her not to pursue her dream because no school district would hire a Chinese woman.

After working as a dental hygienist, Fong Eu’s political career began with her election to the Alameda County School Board in the 1950s. In 1966, she was elected to the California State Assembly, the first Asian American woman to be elected to a state legislature in the United States. She became the first woman to be elected as California secretary of state in 1974, an office she’d go on to hold for the next twenty years.  

The United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognizes participation in elections and voting as a human right, something Fong Eu spent her political career promoting.

As a Christian and follower of Jesus, I am grateful for the ways that Fong Eu expanded access to the ballot box and made voting easier for California residents.

Jesus, it turns out, didn’t say a whole lot about voting. Okay, Jesus didn’t say anything about voting. What Jesus did, over and over again, was find ways to draw people back into community. Whether it was a woman who’d been bleeding for twelve years or a leper who’d been isolated because of a skin disease, people were healed by Jesus, then brought out of their isolation and back into relationship and full participation in communal life.

In the midst of COVID-19 and sheltering in place, our ability to participate in communal life has been restricted in many ways. Where I live, worshipping in person is still deemed unsafe, schools are teaching kids through a “distance model,” and much of our communal life happens over the internet.

Voting in the 2020 general election, however, will not be one of the ways in which community participation in California is limited. Forty years ago, Fong Eu saw an opportunity to open voting up to more Californians. She saw an opportunity for greater access to justice and participation in political life— whether for someone who has just given birth, who faces transportation or work concerns, or who simply prefers to vote at home.

As November 3 approaches and we prepare to make serious decisions about the direction of our country, I am grateful for Fong Eu’s leadership, foresight, and commitment to justice.

Photo by Tiffany Tertipes on Unsplash

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Rev. Katie Goetz is an elder in the United Methodist Church, currently serving as pastor of Woodside Road UMC in Redwood City, California, where she lives with her husband and two elementary-school-age children. She actively participates in her children's school and scout troops, and advocates for justice in San Mateo County. Her daughter will tell you that Katie’s favorite activity is napping, but really it's reading mystery novels.