Cambodian-Americans voting in Tuesday’s US midterm elections have said they were motivated by a need for more checks and balances on President Trump’s power going to the polls.
President Trump’s Republican Party had held the balance of power in all three branches of government prior to the vote, which saw the Democrats win control of the House of Representatives.
Janet Seng, a Cambodian-American voter in Pennsylvania, said she thought it was important for the Democrats to win control of both the House and Senate to provide a check against the power of the office of the president.
“I want to see the changes because I want the Democratic Party to hold the House and the Senate with checks and balances,” she said.
“And if we do not go to help, if we do not vote, they do not know who we are, they cannot help us and we cannot help our country, so it's related. We are Americans, we are here, we have full rights, we live in a country, we can express our voice and we have to strongly take part in the elections and American society,” she said.
Kuch Schanley, a Cambodian-American political analyst, also hoped that Congress would swing to the Democrats.
The Republicans retained control of the Senate.
“If ... the president has a racist idea to discriminate against a race, then it would be racism; there's no opposition, no resistance, and law-making is just so slanted,” he said of a situation where all three branches of government are under the control of a single party.
Muy Chamroeun, a Cambodian-American voter from Washington, DC, said Trump was “now more popular than anyone else” because of his anti-immigrant policies.
“Trump is the best president ... in the history of America. He reforms many things,” he said.
