Shake-up at the polls

Cambodian voters are making themselves heard in Lowell

LOWELL — Sovanna Pouv fondly remembers the 2007 ceremony at Fenway Park in which he became a US citizen. Former President Bush, who appeared via a large monitor, said, “Welcome.’’

Pouv, who was born in a refugee camp in Thailand where his mother fled to escape genocide in her native Cambodia, voted for the first time the following year — something he had long wanted to do.

“It was the best thing I could do, because I can choose my leaders and have a voice,’’ said the 30-year-old, who is an administrator at the United Teen Equality Center, a community group that promotes get-out-the-vote drives.

Cambodians who fled the possibility of death in their native country three decades ago and settled in Lowell make up a quarter of the city’s roughly 106,000 residents and form the second-largest Cambodian community in the United States. In recent years, efforts in Lowell to register, educate, and mobilize this large local voting bloc have increased. Thanks to a combination of these get-out-the-vote efforts and the emergence of more Cambodian-Americans running for office, more people in this group are participating in elections.

Lowell community organizers say they have seen a 40 percent boost in the number of Cambodian-Americans voting since get-out-the-vote efforts began less than a decade ago. In the 2009 municipal election, more than 13,400 voters cast a ballot, compared with more than 12,600 in the 2005 municipal election, said Gail Cenik, manager of the city’s Election and Census Commission, who attributes the jump in part to the increase in Cambodian-American voting.

“The community itself is getting quite politically active,’’ Cenik said.

Organizers say more Cambodian-Americans are at least in part deciding to register to vote because they see more people on the ballot who look like them. Total voter registration climbed to more than 52,300 as of May 1, compared with more than 45,600 in 1999, the year Cambodian-American Rithy Uong became the first elected official of Cambodian descent in the country after winning a City Council seat, according to the city Election and Census Commission.

At least two Cambodian-Americans are expected to run for council seats, hoping to be the first on the panel since Uong resigned in 2005. One of them, Van Pech, has already publicly announced his candidacy. And Cambodian-American Sam Meas ran as a Republican last year to challenge US Representative Niki Tsongas for the Fifth Congressional District, but lost in the primary.

“He really got a lot of people motivated to take part in the election,’’ Cenik said. “Even when he didn’t win in the primary, he got a lot of people to vote.’’