http://www.abqtrib.com/albq/nw_national ... 11,00.html

Bilingual ballot issue disputed
Two women address house

By James W. Brosnan
Scripps Howard News Service
November 9, 2005

WASHINGTON - Two native New Mexicans of Hispanic descent squared off before a House Judiciary subcommittee over whether Congress should continue to require printing non-English ballots in communities where it's not their preferred language.

New Mexico Secretary of State Rebecca Vigil-Giron said bilingual requirements of the Voting Rights Act are needed to "encourage participation by all citizens."

But Albuquerque native Linda Chavez, president of One Nation Indivisible and a Tribune columnist, said bilingual ballots lead to "Balkanization" of the country into ethnic enclaves and contributes to voter fraud.

States like New Mexico should be allowed to use bilingual ballots if they want, but it is unconstitutional for the federal government to make states use non-English ballots when there is no evidence of discrimination against minorities, Chavez argued.

The two testified Tuesday during the constitution subcommittee's sixth hearing on reauthorizing the 40-year-old Voting Rights Act, which expires in August 2007.

The bilingual ballot provisions were added in 1975 and now extend to 496 jurisdictions with large Hispanic, Asian-American or American Indian populations.

But the bilingual ballot requirements are likely to be extended to more communities based on the 2000 Census, if the Voting Rights Act is reauthorized as is.

New Mexico has required ballots in English and Spanish since it became a state in 1912. Under the Voting Rights Act, it plans to provide oral translations of ballots in Tiwa, Tewa, Towa, Zuni and Keres for Pueblo Indians, Vigil-Giron said.

She said New Mexicans should have the right to vote in the language of their heritage.

"We didn't cross the border. The border crossed us," said Vigil-Giron, reminding the subcommittee that the state had once been part of Mexico.

Chavez said Spanish-language ballots were never justified, not even when Congress required them in 1975.

"There is no credible way to equate the discrimination that African-Americans in the South suffered to the situation of Latinos, who had voted, and been elected to office, in great numbers for decades," she said.

Chavez warned the subcommittee that a lawsuit would challenge the constitutionality of bilingual ballots if Congress includes them in the rewrite of the Voting Rights Act.

A Justice Department official did not take an administration position on whether to retain the bilingual ballot requirements.

But Bradley Schlozman, acting assistant attorney general for the civil rights division, told the subcommittee that in the past four years, the division has taken more enforcement actions to protect minority language voters than in the previous 26 years combined, including the first cases to protect Filipino and Vietnamese voters.