• MEMBERS

For first time, Chinese language on ballots

Print | Email

Chinese joins Spanish as the only foreign language in which ballots are available in Cook County. The Justice Department also ordered Kane County to include Spanish ballots in parts of that county by November.

The change in the ballot language requirements comes as the U.S. Census Bureau fine-tunes its population count to pinpoint large pockets of U.S. citizens who have difficulty speaking or understanding English.

More than 220 jurisdictions throughout the country must provide election materials in Spanish, more than 100 will have to provide access to elections to American Indians and Alaskan natives in the appropriate language, and more than 15 jurisdictions are required to provide access to their elections for Asian Americans.

"The Department of Justice is now engaged in an aggressive campaign to make sure citizens who require language assistance to vote receive the assistance they need," Assistant U.S. Attorney General Ralph F. Boyd said last week when ordering the changes.

Officials from Cook County and the Chicago election boards will get together this week with local Chinese leaders to determine the best way to meet the federal government's demands and which precincts will get the ballots. There is no estimate yet of how much money or time it will cost to comply with the federal government's orders.

"We are going to do as much as possible to work with the community groups to make sure we do this right," said Cook County Clerk David Orr.

Orr said the election agencies have to work fast to make sure they not only have the ballots printed on time, but also other election material such as voter registration, candidate qualifying, polling place notices, sample ballots, instructional forms, voter information pamphlets, and absentee ballots. All these materials have to come in three languages.

"It's going to be a tough job," Orr said.

There was some concern about what language the ballots should be written in, but although there are many languages in China there is only one alphabet. Some Chinese leaders in Chicago, which is home to more than 20,000 Chinese Americans, said they were surprised by the federal government's decision but said it would help.

Esther Wong, executive director of the Chinese American Service League, said the Chinese ballots would be used by many in Chinatown and would help people assimilate more quickly into the American political system.

The Chinese ballot will also help some of the area's Vietnamese speakers because the written language is somewhat similar, Wong said.

But the move to include foreign languages on ballots has irked some.

"As an immigrant from Chile, I believe this federal law will not guard or even help U.S. citizens who don't speak our common language, English. Rather, it will leave them blindly picking at straws since the majority of 'campaigning' by politicians will be done in English," said Mauro E. Mujica, chairman of U.S. English, an English-only advocacy group.

Not all immigrants who speak English poorly are covered by the federal Voting Rights Act. The government says the act applies only to "those language minorities that have suffered a history of exclusion from the political process: Spanish, Asian, Native American, and Alaskan Native."

Officials say additional language requirements could be on the way.

"This is the stepping stone for many people into the political system," Orr said. "It's made to make sure that everyone who is eligible to vote gets involved."