Thread: NY: How do you say voter fraud in Spanish, Russian?

Language barrier in the voting booth
By Matthew Wolfe
02/01/2008
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Advocates claim non-English reading immigrants are at a disadvantage in the voting booth.


Advocates claim non-English reading immigrants are at a disadvantage in the voting booth.
As Brooklyn prepares to go to the polls for the February 5 presidential primaries, a large segment of the borough’s citizens face a high hurdle: They don’t read English.

Many non-English reading immigrants, advocates say, are kept from casting their ballot because materials printed in their native language are unavailable.

In Brooklyn, official materials explain the process for registering and voting are available only in English, Spanish and Chinese. Yet, immigrant advocates say, this leaves out the great swathes of fully naturalized citizens that populate the borough’s many ethnic enclaves, including the Polish Community of Greenpoint, the West Indians of Flatbush, and Russian population of Sheepshead Bay, Brighton Beach and Bensonhurst.

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“A lot of immigrant communities aren’t as politically engaged as they might be,â€

A prerequisite for voting in the United States is Citizenship. A rerequisite for citizenship is the ability to communicate in English. That is the law. What is it about the law that they do not understand?


Russian:

ПредпоÑ

Chin agreed that while younger immigrants should be provided the educational opportunities necessary to learn English and about citizenship, the problem is particularly acute among the elderly, who may have a difficult time learning to read English if they emigrated late in life.

I can totally understand why it's more difficult for the older ones. Lord knows I don't think I'd be able to learn another language fluently at my age. That's why I resent this "must speak Spanish" now. So many dis-placed workers of outsourced jobs and such are middle-aged and older. Their already settling for less money without adding the burden of a foreign language and an increasing youthful population to be forced to compete with.

Bring a translator then. I don't blame them for being up-set. If they're going to cater to certain groups then they should cater to them all. Or cater to none and let their communities figure out an answer and provide their own translators for their people. I didn't even notice if we had ballots in another language.....sure we did but I didn't personally see it. I know there was English and Spanish for early voting but we have a ton of different immigrant groups here and there was no mention of them.

Originally Posted by legal4mykidsfuture

A prerequisite for voting in the United States is Citizenship. A rerequisite for citizenship is the ability to communicate in English. That is the law. What is it about the law that they do not understand?

I am helping a 42 year old Chinese immigrant study for the citizenship test. It is 100 questions and everything is in English. If they can pass this test, they should not have any problems understanding the ballot. After all the ballots are pretty simple, only one or two pages.

Originally Posted by crazybird

I can totally understand why it's more difficult for the older ones. Lord knows I don't think I'd be able to learn another language fluently at my age.

How old are you? I am learning Chinese at age 52. Not all the characters, there are thousands of them!

How old are you? I am learning Chinese at age 52. Not all the characters, there are thousands of them!

Same as you for a few more days... I'm not good at learning foreign languages. I took German...that wasn't too bad. I don't consider myself fluent but I could get by. Then French....except picture a teacher like Arnold (from Austria) teaching French to a class of Arabs...except for me. LOL Lord knows if anyone in France could understand me. I passed but it's hard to retain when you don't use it all the time. Both daughters took German so I was surprised I retained as much as I did.

I worked with a girl from China. She wrote our names with the symbol.....very beautiful. She taught us a few phrases but felt it was disrespectful to not speak English and really didn't feel comfortable playing "how do you say this" in Chinese. She was more concerned in getting her English down and didn't really want to speak Chinese.
Some of the girls were wanting tattoos and wanted to make sure what they were having written was correct and she was fine doing that.

I just know that even if I tried to learn Spanish....I wouldn't reach a level to be considered "bi-lingual" since Spanish isn't totally what they speak either. When 4th year Spanish students can't read a childrens book to a kindergarten class and have them understand it...what's the point?

This is why it should be in ENGLISH and bring your own translator!

Dixie

Need a LINK

[quote]In 1965, Congress, citing unequal educational opportunities for certain minority groups that resulted in high English illiteracy, passed the Voting Rights Act which allowed for the provision of voting materials in languages other than English. However, the community must be of a certain size and also lack a certain level of the education. For a number of Brooklyn’s community’s, they do not quality.

“The Russian community [in Brooklyn] is big enough,â€