Democracy in America isn’t contingent on much. Voters don’t have to own property, they aren’t required to be men, they don’t have to pay a fee or take a test, and they don’t have to have finished high school or be able to read English.
To increase participation in the voting process, the Voting Rights Act says that jurisdictions where at least five percent of voting-age citizens are members of a single-language minority group, and where the rate of those citizens who have not completed fifth grade is higher than the national rate, the jurisdiction must provide language assistance.
In many parts of New Mexico, for example, this means providing information in Navajo and Pueblo; Arizona has those and some other Native American languages: Hopi, Yuma, and Tohono O’Odham. In parts of Mississippi, counties need to provide assistance in Choctaw. In Hawaii, there are sizable minorities of citizens who speak Chinese, Filipino, and Japanese. Parts of New York have sizable Asian minorities too. I was most surprised to see that in Alaska’s Aleutians, election officials are required to provide assistance in Filipino. There’s a story there that I’ve made a note to track down later. Not surprisingly, many counties across the country need to provide assistance in Spanish.
California, being the most populous state in the country and the most diverse society this world has ever known, has the greatest number of languages in which counties have to provide election assistance. The US Census Bureau is the entity that makes the determination, and they released the new list this week. They identify the “language minority groups,” not the language itself. So instead of listing “Spanish,” they list “Hispanic” as a minority language group that meets the threshold. Likewise for their use of “Filipino” instead of “Tagalog.”
Twenty-seven counties have to provide election information in at least one language other than English. All twenty-seven of those must do so in Spanish, eight in Chinese, five in Vietnamese, four in Tagalog, two in Korean, and one each in Asian Indian (presumably Hindi) and Japanese. The list even says that Los Angeles must provide assistance to “Other Asian—Not specified.” Good luck with that, LA! (Joking aside, we’ve heard a rumor that this mystery language is Cambodian.)
Los Angeles leads the way with eight languages other than English, and four other counties — Alameda, Orange, San Diego, and Santa Clara — tie for second with four.
Riverside and Imperial Counties have fewer languages to provide now than before, both having lost Central/Southern American Indian and Imperial also losing Yuman. In fact, nationwide, 16.3% fewer counties must provide bilingual ballots this coming decade than had to last decade.
If you want more detail about these requirements, including the nationwide list of language groups, go to the US Census Bureau’s website on the issue.
One more reason to thank your Registrar of Voters!
