Foreign language ballots are a bad idea

The U.S. Department of Justice took time out from its war on terrorists this month to order local election boards all across the country to publish ballots for the November election in various foreign languages. The law requires that if more than 5 percent or more than 10,000 citizens of voting-age in a county don't speak English, the county must follow the language-access provisions of the Voting Rights Act and translate election materials into their language.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was one of the big achievements of the Civil Rights movement of the '60s, but the black Americans who were supposed to benefit from that movement all speak English. The act was hijacked by a 1975 amendment that added a "language minority" section.

Only U.S. citizens may legally vote. In order to become a naturalized American citizen, our laws require that you demonstrate "an understanding of the English language, including an ability to read, write and speak ... simple words and phrases ... in ordinary usage in the English language."

Printing ballots in foreign languages is fundamentally anti-democratic because fair elections depend on public debate on the issues and candidates. People who don't understand the public debate are subject to manipulation by political-action groups that can mislead them in language translations and then tell them how to vote.

Nevertheless, the Department of Justice has ordered more than 335 jurisdictions in 30 states to provide ballots, signs, registration forms and informational brochures in foreign languages. This unfunded mandate will cost the states at least $27 million.

Denver and seven Colorado counties must print election ballots in Spanish (as well as English) at a cost of an additional $80,000 to $100,000 for ballots and translators. Two Colorado counties must provide language services for Navajo and Ute residents.

Counties required to provide Vietnamese ballots include Harris County, Texas, and three in California: Los Angeles, Orange and Santa Clara. Santa Clara County prints ballots in Vietnamese, Chinese, Spanish and Tagalog, the national language of the Philippines.

Alameda County prints ballots in Spanish and Chinese and may have to add Tagalog, Dari and Punjabi.

Los Angeles prints ballots in seven languages: Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, Tagalog and Vietnamese, as well as English. The registrar says she is preparing to add Cambodian.

Counties with percentages of Hispanics that will soon trigger this mandate include Prince George's in Maryland and Arlington and Fairfax in Virginia.

For the first time this year, officials in Queens, New York, must provide ballots in Korean. Ballots in Chinese and Spanish have already been in use in the New York boroughs of Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens.

Cook County, Illinois, must provide ballots in Chinese as well as Spanish. There is some concern about which Chinese language the ballots should be written in because there are many languages in China.

Nationwide, more than 220 jurisdictions must provide election materials in Spanish, more than 100 in the languages of American Indians or Alaskan natives, and more than 15 in Asian languages.

The Voting Rights Act actually discriminates. It doesn't cover all immigrants who don't speak English; it applies only to "those language minorities that have suffered a history of exclusion from the political process: Spanish, Asian, Native American and Alaskan Native."

Assistant U.S. Attorney General Ralph F. Boyd said that "the Department of Justice is now engaged in an aggressive campaign to make sure citizens who require language assistance to vote receive the assistance they need." It's unfortunate that the Justice Department isn't just as aggressive in making sure that votes are not cast by persons ineligible, such as those who are dead, non-citizens, not registered, moved away, registered in more than one jurisdiction (in 2000, hundreds voted in both Florida and New York), felons, mentally incompetent, or living in nursing homes where their vote is co-opted and cast by someone else.

Alabama has pointed the way to making a state's election process more honest and fair. It has just completed a 13-year project to clean up the voter rolls by removing more than 150,000 persons who are dead and 50,000 who have moved away.

When the Alabama project started, more than a dozen counties had more registered voters listed than adult inhabitants. The clean-up project removed about 10 percent of names from Alabama's voter rolls, more than enough to determine many an election result. Failure to purge ineligible persons from the voter lists is an open door to fraud.

Voting is a right, not a privelege in this country, but it's also a duty of citizenship. And if people are unwilling to even learn the dominant language of the nation, what interest do they have in citizenship? They have segregated themselves from the mainstream of American life, its economy and society, and so now I suppose they want the ability to vote for Democrats who will provide them the public assistance they need because they have chosen not to become part of the mainstream of American life.

While we're at it, let's repeal that provision in the Constitution that says you have to be born in the US to be eligible for the Presidency. That's just so blatantly racist and intolerant.

For the record, I agree 100% with this article. I'd go even farther and ask those who vote 3 or 4 simple questions before they are allowed to vote. Something like:

1)What year did the U.S. land on the moon?
2)Who was the first President of the United States?
3)Who were the leaders of England, the U.S. and the Soviet Union during 1942?
4)Who was the President of the United States during the Civil War?
5)Who is the Governor of your state?
6)Who are your two Senators?

This seems like a quiz which should be simple to answer. If those that are voting don't know who FDR, Stalin and Churchill are, how can we expect them to make an intelligent decision about who their Assemblyman should be?

The ballots in my community have been bi-lingual for years. It's not only annoying to go to the polls and try to find one person who works there who understands you, but also, to try to figure out which side of the ballot is printed in a language you can understand. At one time, this community had a huge population of Cuban refugees who assimilated and made every attempt to learn English and fit into the community. Now, we are dealing with Mexicans and Central Americans who refuse to change their cultural identity. It's unfair. When I write my Congressman and tell him my feelings, he NEVER responds. He, himself, is Hispanic and is concerned only with issues which benefit Hispanic Americans. So, the only alternative is to relocate and sacrifice the community to them which has been the custom or shut up and put up.

How do these people even register to vote if they don't speak English? What's there to understand in a ballot? There are names, office positions, and party affiliations, that's it! What's there to change?? George Bush to Jorge Bush? I don't get it!
My mother (who has very limited English) doesn't demand that the ballot be in her native language (which ain't Spanish by the way)! What's next? Road signs in Spanish?
I am sorry, but English is just about one of the easiest languages in the world. Nobody requires immigrants to be able to converse on the subject of nuclear physics in English. Knowing essentials of English (even 200 word vocabulary will do) is a minimum of respect an immigrant should show to the adoptive country.

How do they register to vote? Beats me. I feel like a foreigner in my own town which I have lived in all my life.
TV programming in now bilingual in many cases. When you dial up Verizon or Cablevision or most any other large corporation, the recording asks you if your preference is English or Spanish. My Verizon directory is in both Spanish and English. You have to turn it over to read it. I don't understand why immigrants can't be forced to learn English. When I travel abroad, I don't expect the natives to speak to me in English- - -but they always do. Even many of the Afghan warlords speak some English. Why can't Hispanics?

PING - as you stated if you don't learn the mother tongue of this country, you shouldn’t be a Citizen either. The best words spoken in a long time, why should we have to spend one cent in printing anything in another language in this country except in helping to teach them our language.

And the ones who take the biggest offense at the "multi-lingual" aspects of education and official documents are the immigrants who came here legally, are learning the language, and who want their children to learn English so they can be a success in school and in life here.

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