Bilingual Ballots
June 30, 2008
As American as apple pie
The importance of voting cannot be overestimated. The franchise has been steadily expanded from white landowning males to all males, to blacks, to women, to all citizens over 18. Our secular faith teaches us that the more citizens participate, the stronger and healthier a democracy we have.
The city of Boston currently provides bilingual ballots for Chinese and Vietnamese-speaking voters under legislation stemming from a 2005 agreement with the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. The cost to taxpayers is insignificant; the ballots are only needed in a few neighborhoods with a high number of elderly, non-English speaking voters. Fully bilingual ballots for Chinese-speaking voters have also been used successfully in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York City, and Alameda, Orange and Santa Clara counties in California.
However, the legislation providing bilingual ballots in Boston neighborhoods expires in December 2008. A Home Rule Petition to extend fully bilingual ballots passed the City Council unanimously on May 14 and was signed by Mayor Tom Menino.
Contrary to a popular misconception, bilingual ballots are not a crutch that discourages immigrants from learning English. Naturalized citizens must be able to read, write and speak basic English. But the federal government makes exceptions for people over the age of 55 who have lived in the United States as permanent residents for at least 15 years. They may use their native language to pass the naturalization exam. They are United States citizens and should have the same right to vote as other Americans.
Bilingual ballots increase participation. In the first year that the Chinese community had fully bilingual ballots, Asian American voter turnout exceeded the general turnout rate for the first time in Boston’s history.
Bilingual ballots are simply a matter of guaranteeing fair, honest and open elections, and protecting our elections from corruption. In “the good old days,” ward bosses would deliver blocs of votes by telling the non-English speakers how to vote or by even voting for them. It’s still not unheard of for someone to go into the voting booth with non-English speakers and select the ballot choices. The 2005 Department of Justice lawsuit against Boston cited allegations that poll workers were suggesting to Chinese-speaking voters which candidates to vote for when they went in the booth.
Elderly Chinese- and Vietnamese- speaking citizens should be able to participate fully and independently in our elections, and fully bilingual ballots are key to this. Some elderly Chinese-speaking voters do not read the Western alphabet, and transliteration is a phonetic rendering which uses Chinese characters to approximate the sound of a foreign name. Transliteration of names is standard practice throughout the world. The Chinese-language newspapers already have established Chinese names for candidates and political figurers, such as Mayor Menino and Hillary Clinton.
Some opponents, such as Secretary of State William Galvin, claim that transliterated names would confuse voters, because the characters for Mitt Romney, for example, are supposedly the same as those for “sticky rice.” By that logic, English-speaking voters would mistake our president for a plant, the U.S. secretary of state for a bowl of rice and Massachusetts’ junior senator for an Indian spice. This, of course, is ridiculous.
The Home Rule Petition to extend bilingual ballots in Boston must now be approved at the state level. The Legislature’s formal will end in July. If the bill were enacted by then, it still would not go into effect until 90 days after the governor’s approval. That means the Chinese community has already lost equal access to the vote for the September state primary election, when candidate choices will appear in English only. But it’s still not too late to win fully bilingual ballots in time for the history-making November presidential election.
Bilingual ballots are about voter access and guaranteeing confidence in our electoral system. Massachusetts has been the port of entry and assimilation for generations of immigrants from every corner of the globe. We cannot take a step backwards in protecting the rights of citizens to cast a ballot independently.
Sam Yoon is a Boston city councilor.
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Thank you, Councilor Yoon for all your hard work on this issue…and others. You have truly been a voice for our community, and we cant thank you enough. Thats why I will support you in any way I can. I hope others will join me.