Witnesses Say Language Assistance Is Still Effective and Affordable
Feature Story by Matthew Fleischman - June 26, 2006
The need for language assistance for voters who don't speak English very well was the focus of a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA) on June 13.
Help for those who do not speak English well is guaranteed by Section 203 of the VRA. It was added to the law in 1975 and is one of the provisions of the Act set to expire in August 2007.
Senators asked the witnesses how much cost jurisdictions are incurring by providing language assistance for elections. While critics claimed the costs are excessive, John Trasviña, interim president and general counsel for MALDEF, said that a study found the provision "presents no additional costs to most jurisdictions."
According to Margaret Fung, executive director of AALDEF, another study found that 90 percent of jurisdictions said that compliance with the VRA costs "only an average of 3 percent of total costs." Deborah Wright, the Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk for Los Angeles County, said that providing assistance "is slightly less than ten percent of the County's annual election expenses."
Senators were very interested in how the government should define "limited English proficient." Sen. Tom Coburn, R. Okla., asked why there were citizens who are not proficient in English when English is a requirement for naturalization. Trasviña said that many complicated ballot provisions "demand a higher level of English language proficiency than do the naturalization requirements," which require only a fifth grade level of understanding.
Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D. Mass., said that there can be waiting lists of up to three years to take English classes. He said that it would be unfair to inhibit citizens' ability to vote because of a failure to fund the classes.
To illustrate how complicated English ballots are, Sen. Kennedy read part of a Colorado ballot. All the senators joked during the question-and-answer session that they had trouble understanding the "legalese" on ballots like the one Kennedy had read.
Because of the VRA requirement to translate ballots, witnesses said that more jurisdictions are writing the English language versions of ballots in a more comprehensible way.
Critics question the constitutionality of the language provision, given the standard set out in the Supreme Court's decision in
City of Boerne v. Flores. However, John Trasviña argued that the provision meets the standard set out by
City of Boerne because it is not burdensome to covered districts and helps fix a "longstanding, pervasive, and continuing" problem.
