Thread: Bilingual mailers causing uproar

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Bilingual mailers causing uproar
Election officials telling irate callers law requires Spanish-language version
By Alan Gathright, Rocky Mountain News
April 24, 2006

The emotionally charged immigration debate has careened into the Denver Election Commission.
Officials have been flooded with irate calls about bilingual election mailers. They've had to explain that Spanish-language voter information was federally mandated here in 2002.

Election officials have been surprised by the harshly critical calls from people who incorrectly think Denver recently "chose to be a bilingual county" and are demanding to know "why should we have to wade through all of this 'Mexican language' in our voting documents," said interim commission executive director Alton Dillard.

About 60 calls came in Thursday and Friday after the agency mailed out bilingual absentee ballot applications for the August primary and November general election, he said.

Dillard said he thinks the calls are being fueled by the heated national debate over whether Congress should pass legislation making illegal immigration a felony or grant undocumented residents guest-worker status with the opportunity to work toward citizenship.

"There's been some inference that this (bilingual voter information) is another example of the country being given away. It's very strident stuff," he said.

Elections officials try to explain that for nearly four years Denver has been under a mandate from the U.S. Department of Justice to provide voter materials in both English and Spanish, Dillard said. Since at least 1976, the city voluntarily has provided bilingual ballots "because it's good customer service," he added.

The requirement began in the 1970s after Congress heard "extensive testimony about voting discrimination that had been suffered by Hispanic, Asian and Native American citizens," according to the DOJ Web site. In 1975, lawmakers amended the federal Voting Rights Act to require that voting materials be printed in the minority languages of groups that totaled 10,000 people or more than 5 percent of a community's voting age population.

Denver is one of eight Colorado counties with the Spanish-language requirement. The others tend to be small, rural southern Colorado counties. In La Plata and Montezuma counties, election materials are required in Native American Navajo and Ute languages.

In tiny Costilla County, an election official was puzzled by the Denver brouhaha.

"We've been providing voter materials for years in English and Spanish and we've haven't heard anything like that," said Charlene Duran, a Costilla elections clerk.

But Crowley County Clerk Lucile Nichols said her office has "gotten many complaints in the past, because (the bilingual mandate) doubles the cost of printing." The county has just 2,044 registered voters.

Michael McGarry, acting director of the Colorado Alliance for Immigration Reform, called the minority language mandate "an affront" and "a capitulation" to non-English speaking citizens.

"To qualify for citizenship and be naturalized you have to have a working knowledge of English," so non-English voting materials are unnecessary, said McGarry. His group supports a crackdown on illegal immigration and is critical of government programs providing information in non-English languages.

gathrighta@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-892-5486

To qualify for citizenship and be naturalized you have to have a working knowledge of English," so non-English voting materials are unnecessary, said McGarry. His group supports a crackdown on illegal immigration and is critical of government programs providing information in non-English languages.

Boy do I agree with that!!!! As long as they have that, hispanic TV and radio and anything else in any other language they are going to remain seperate and not a part of the American culture. Personally, as far as I'm concerned, I only want to see any foreign language on a menu at an ethnic restaurant and that's it.