25 States To Use Bilingual Ballots

Bilingual ballots have been ordered in 25 states, according to a report from the Associated Press, down from 30 in 2000. The 248 counties that will be using the ballots to comply with the federal Voting Rights Act. The Associated Press reported:

Effective this week, Hispanics who don’t speak English proficiently will be entitled to Spanish-language election material in urban areas of political battleground states including Pennsylvania, Virginia, Wisconsin and Utah, as well as the entire states of California, Florida and Texas. For the first time, people from India will get election material in their native language, in voting precincts in Los Angeles, Chicago and New York, due to their fast population growth.

More American Indian tribal languages will be made available in many parts of Alaska, Arizona and Mississippi, while Vietnamese and Taiwanese will get their own voting assistance in several new areas, including parts of Washington state, Texas, Massachusetts and California. Asian Bangladeshi must be provided for the first time in Hamtramck, Mich, which neighbors Detroit.

Voting legislation is very important to Latinos and other minority groups across the country. We wrote about this issue in Texas this week, the effect on Latino voters as well as state-sponsored complicity in these types of problems.

Making public that these municipalities must provide these materials will, hopefully, allow many more people to vote in 2012.