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Quoted Text

Concerns arise about languages at polls
Law requires multilingual voting materials
BY DEEPTI HAJELA The Associated Press

    NEW YORK — The streets of Flushing, Queens, provide a vivid display of the many languages of New York City: A local church offers services in English, Chinese and Spanish. One business sign after another is written in Chinese. And on Election Day, voters will cast ballots in a Taiwanese community center.
    Diverse cities like New York will be confronted with daunting challenges on Tuesday as they try to ensure that signs and ballots are printed in languages like Spanish, Korean and Chinese and interpreters are available to help those whose English fluency is limited.
    It is a challenge that cities around the country will face during an election that will have high turnout and waves of newly registered voters, many of them immigrants voting for the first time. Some advocates of minority voter participation are concerned over whether election jurisdictions around the country will be adequately prepared to deal with the influx.
    “I’m one of those people that thinks it’s going to be a major, major problem this year, the scope of which we have never seen before,” said Cesar Perales, president and general counsel of Latino Justice PRLDEF, formerly known as the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund.
    The federal Voting Rights Act requires jurisdictions that have a certain number of citizens who speak a language other than English and have limited proficiency in English to provide all election materials in that language and to render assistance such as interpretation.
    Whether a jurisdiction falls under the requirement is based on Census data, with the latest list created in 2002. Different places can have different requirements. In New York, the Bronx must offer materials in Spanish, Brooklyn and Manhattan must offer them in Spanish and Chinese and Queens in Spanish, Chinese and Korean.
    In Florida, Miami-Dade County must have material in Spanish, while Broward County must provide it for Hispanic and Seminole communities. Thirty states have jurisdictions that fall under the language requirements, according to the 2002 list.
    The Department of Justice said this past week that its Civil Rights Division will send more than 800 observers and department personnel to 59 jurisdictions in 23 states on Tuesday to monitor compliance with the Voting Rights Act, including its minority language provisions.
    But advocates say that in past elections there have been problems, whether in terms of foreignlanguage signs or properly trained interpreters being available.
    “Compliance with the language provision is spotty at best,” said Nina Perales, southwest regional counsel for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. “Some do a good job; some don’t do anything.”
    “I think it’s way down on the list” as a priority, said Laughlin McDonald, director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project.
    In New York City, the Asian American Legal Defense Fund sued the city’s Board of Elections in 2006, alleging that the agency wasn’t properly fulfilling requirements to provide language help for Asian-Americans with limited English proficiency and that Asian-Americans were encountering discrimination when they tried to vote. That lawsuit was settled, with the city changing some of its procedures, including where it assigns translators.
    “Everybody believes this is a better system; now the question becomes each year to make sure it works,” said Steven Richman, general counsel for the board.
    Rosanna Rahmouni, election day operations coordinator at the board, said there were expected to be 759 Chinese interpreters, 160 Korean interpreters and 1,315 Spanish interpreters at precincts across the city on Tuesday.
    She said other changes had been made as well. In previous years, only certain designated precincts had signs in the required non-English languages.
    Since last year, she said all signage in every poll site around the city is printed in English, Spanish, Chinese and Korean, whether it’s a language-designated precinct or not.
    “To me it didn’t matter; you have voters who speak that language in all sites,” she said.
    Margaret Fung, executive director of the AALDF, said she was “cautiously optimistic” the situation would be better than in previous years in New York but was worried about how it would go across the country, especially with increased voter turnout.
    “The numbers are really going to be much bigger than people expect,” she said.
    Advocates also pointed out that problems could come up in places not among those jurisdictions required by the federal law to post materials in different languages. That includes places where the demographics have changed so that they suddenly have big populations of immigrants who don’t speak English.


MARK LENNIHAN/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
In this February file photo, Lester Chang, left, a coordinator with New York City’s Board of Elections, talks with Zhang Wan Hong, center, as she arrives to vote in the presidential primary election in the Chinatown section of New York, while interpreter Ke Cheng looks on at right. Diverse cities like New York will be faced with daunting challenges on Tuesday as they try to ensure that signs and ballots are printed in languages like Spanish, Korean and Chinese, and interpreters are available to help those whose English fluency is limited.

Huh?

In order to vote, you must be a U.S. citizen

In order to become a U.S. citizen you must prove fluency in English (speaking, reading, and writing).

So why would there ever be a need for stuff in other languages?   More waste of taxpayer money by those who refuse to learn English.  

why do you gotta be so hateful mr repub? You hate everyone?

MC is correct, if you can't read and write in English, then you shouldn't be a citizen and therefore not able to vote.

Quoted from Shadow

MC is correct, if you can't read and write in English, then you shouldn't be a citizen and therefore not able to vote.

This should be a no brainer, wouldn't ya think?

How about this?  I have a great idea.  If you, personally, cannot read the Constitution and understand it, then you are not protected by it and the rights that are clearly stated in it.  If you would like, you can pick to go back to the country you came from, or we will pick one that speaks the same language as you and return you there.  Of course, in the case where we choose, we will be sending you back to the country that speaks the language that it would cost us the least to send you back to.  Spanish? Back to Mexico.  French?  Canada / Quebec.  Portuguese?  Brazil.  Of course, we would have to figure other languages one by one.  But...this may depend on your locality, as those illegals found in Florida that speak Spanish could much easier be sent back to Cuba instead.

If it is that important to vote then learn how in the native tongue....you chose to move here.....just like one thinks it's important to breath you would
eventually come up for air when under water......JMHO......