LOWELL, Mass. -- Shortly after becoming an American citizen last year, Van Chim voted in his first election.

The 39-year-old machine operator and Lowell resident cast his ballot for U.S. Sen. John Kerry, and said he expects to vote in the City Council elections on Nov. 8.

“I want to vote,” he said with a shrug and a smile when asked why he decided to register. “It was good.”

Voting is still a rare feat for most of Lowell's estimated 30,000 residents of Cambodian descent. But more than 750 Cambodian-Americans registered to vote in the year prior to February, according to officials with the Lowell Cambodian-American Voting Project.

Project officials said there are now more than 2,600 registered Cambodian-American voters in the city, about 6 percent of the total, though the number has increased 40 percent since February 2004.

“It's a trend now,” said Bunsong Suo, director of the Cambodian voter-outreach organization Family Unity of Lowell, which ran the voting project with ONE Lowell, a Lowell-based immigrant advocacy agency.

Suo, 26, registered as part of the project and voted for the first time last November.

The project began last February. Family Unity volunteers examined city voter rolls and culled about 1,900 names they believed to be Southeast Asian.

With help from students in the University of Massachusetts Lowell's Regional Economic and Social Development program, who “mapped” those voters' addresses, Suo and fellow Family Unity members began door-to-door canvassing of heavily Cambodian-American neighborhoods, such as the Lower Highlands.

Project organizers also produced a weekly Cambodian-language television show on public-access cable in which they discussed the importance of voting and interviewed candidates. They staffed information booths at events such as the Southeast Asian Water Festival and Khmer Cultural Festival last summer.

Veteran local Cambodian-American voter Sidney Liang, 36, who works at the Lowell Community Health Center, said he is encouraged by the gains in Southeast Asian voter registration, but noted that is the “easiest part.”

Actually getting them to the polls is another matter, he said. For many who experienced the often-turbulent national politics of Cambodia, political participation has only negative connotations.

“Once you're voting, many people feel that they're committing themselves to something and they will be held responsible, if they choose the wrong person, they will be punished,” Liang said. “The fear of going to vote is much, much more than registering to vote. It's because of the system they've known for so long.”

He said more outreach and education work is needed with such residents before the increase in Lowell's Cambodian-American voter turnout will match that seen with voter registration.

The news from Lowell comes on the heels of the first national exit polls ever conducted with Asian-American voters. Massachusetts data was released earlier this week, showing a sharp increase in first-time voters.

Pollsters found that 42 percent of the nearly 800 Asian-American voters polled in this state last November -- and 61 percent of the Cambodian-Americans -- were voting for the first time.

“It shows that Asian-Americans are growing political constituencies all over Massachusetts, particularly Lowell,” said Glenn Magpantay, staff attorney for the New York City-based Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF), which oversaw the polling.

Almost half the Massachusetts voters polled were of Chinese descent. About 30 percent were of Vietnamese descent and 15 percent were Cambodian-American.

Overall, pollsters talked to about 11,000 Asian-American voters in eight states, including Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Virginia.

Massachusetts polls were conducted in Boston, Lowell and Quincy. Family Unity volunteers helped in Lowell.