In an effort to encourage a more active voter participation, the New York City Campaign Finance Board is doing more than just printing multi-language voters’ guides. In an unprecedented move, this year the Board is putting out a voters’ guide video, which will be broadcast on television during the campaign period.

The Board will also conduct 10 candidate debates in August, which will be broadcast live by WNBC and NY1, and will be dubbed into Chinese, Korean and Spanish and broadcast later by respective community stations.

In the Chinese community, however, the announcement that the Chinese debates will be carried by the three-year-old New Tang Dynasty TV (NTDTV) has raised eyebrows. Many have questioned the selection criteria and process.

Andrea Lynn, spokeswoman for the New York City Campaign Finance Board, explained that NY1 was chosen because it covers local politics, and because they have worked together many times before. When Lynn was informed that NTDTV started just three years ago and that it does not have a very wide audience, she was not able to give a reason why NY1 selected NTDTV.

Bernie Han, vice president of the NY1 News, admitted that they did not survey all Chinese TV stations in New York City. NTDTV approached them voluntarily, she said, and since they have worked together before, NTDTV was selected.

While she knew how important it is to dub the debates into Chinese since a large population of Chinese audience does not understand English well, Han said she did not know the size of the audience base of NTDTV.

For the Chinese community, it is apparent that the problem is not about why NTDTV was selected but how it was selected. Many Chinese said that the selection process was not open and democratic.

Phillip Chang, president of the Sinovision, was quite surprised when he was told that NTDTV had been chosen. Sinovision, which began broadcasting in 1990, is the longest-running and most widely recognized Chinese television station [in New York City], Chang said, and added that they have expanded political coverage since John Liu and Jimmy Meng were elected. He also said that Sinovision purchased its channel from NYC TV, which can be seen in all five boroughs, while the NTDTV only covers south of 79th Street in Manhattan.

But despite Sinovision’s experience in covering political events, Chang said that they were never told about the debates by the Board. If the purpose of the broadcast is to serve the most voters, he added, the selection was very unwise.

Two other television stations, including Sino TV, also were unaware of the selection and claimed the Board could have done more research before making their selection.

But Kelly Hong, director of NTDTV, said that although the television channel is only three years old, it has always covered extensive political news. They started to work with NY1 a year ago and have built up trust, he said, and were not surprised to be selected.

Margaret Fong, director of the Asian American Legal and Education Defense Fund, described the process of selecting NTDTV as “not professional” because it failed to consult anyone in the Chinese community.

The community fought for a long time to have Chinese translation of the debates and hoped that the selection would be based on reaching the largest audience, Fong added.

Johnson Lee, a consultant of the Chinese American Voters Alliance, said that the selection should be conducted in a fair and transparent way. Because so many people claimed that the NTDTV was not the best choice in terms of professionalism, history, audience and reputation, he promised to look into the matter.