Taking Responsibility

Why campaigns should pay for ballot snafu

BY LELAND Y. YEE

Political involvement entails responsibility for how we conduct ourselves in the electoral process. As an integral part of the political landscape, Chinese American elected officials have the responsibility to set a high standard and govern with integrity, openness and deliberation. That is why I opposed a resolution at a Board of Supervisors meeting last week that would have required the Department of Elections to immediately mail new absentee ballots with all candidates' names in Chinese. My opposition to this action had nothing to do with any individual or with bilingual ballots and voting material, but with the fairness and integrity of the electoral process.

The resolution resulted from the fact that a number of absentee ballots mailed to San Francisco voters did not include Chinese translations for certain candidate names, including those of Mabel Teng and supervisor candidate Victor Marquez. At the time the board was asked to vote, there was a dispute over whether this happened because certain campaigns had told the Department of Elections that they did not want candidate's name to appear in Chinese or because of an error by the Department of Elections. The sponsor of the resolution, Michael Yaki, was not interested in hearing from the Elections Department. Instead, he wanted the Board of Supervisors to immediately take action that had the potential to impugn the fine work of acting elections chief Naomi Nishioka and her staff and the integrity of the electoral process.

It is unfair to blame a city department for not sending out correct information without giving the department the opportunity to respond. That is especially true in light of indications that at least one of the candidates had been called two or three times and declined the offer to have her name printed in Chinese.

Clearly a mistake was made. Why anyone would choose not to have his/her name in Chinese is beyond me. But the correction of this mistake should not be borne by the taxpayers. Instead, the campaigns should make every effort to correct it by contacting Chinese-speaking voters themselves.

I have been a long-time supporter of multilingual ballots, and if there were concrete evidence that the Department of Elections had made a mistake, I would have wholeheartedly supported correcting the error and resending election pamphlets.

However, this is not at all clear. I was extremely uncomfortable taking action on a resolution that had not been publicly debated, particularly since the Department of Elections had no opportunity to provide policymakers with information. It appears that we were tampering with the election process in the interest of individual candidates when there is no evidence that the process was flawed-the appropriate venue to determine who was in error and whether the Department of Elections needs to send out new ballots is in a court, not the Board of Supervisors.

Many of my supporters have asked me to respond to criticisms of my vote, but I chose to remain silent since this issue was remanded to the courts. Now that the court has decided, I have outlined the reason for my action.

I will always work for the betterment of ChineseAmericans in the city. But I will do that in a fair and even-handed manner. The Chinese American community knows all too well about mistreatment. We have been the victims too many times before. Now that we have a modicum of power, I want to set a standard of fairness and equity-and act accordingly.

Leland Yee is a San Francisco supervisor.

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