Advocates concerned about language access at polls

By Deepti Hajela
ASSOCIATED PRESS

10:44 a.m. November 1, 2008

NEW YORK – The Flushing section of Queens provides a vivid display of the many languages of New York City: A 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 such as New York face daunting challenges Tuesday as they try to ensure that signs and ballots are printed in other languages including Spanish, Korean and Chinese, and that interpreters are available to help voters whose English fluency is limited.

Some advocates of minority voter participation are concerned over whether election jurisdictions around the country will be adequately prepared to deal with the issue in an election that will have high turnout and waves of newly registered voters, many of them immigrants.

“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,â€