Advocates across U.S. fight to ensure citizens not fluent in English have equal access to elections

LAS VEGAS — In the heart of Las Vegas’ Chinatown, on the second floor of a sprawling shopping plaza that serves as a hub for the city’s Asian community, residents gather for a celebration of the annual Dragon Boat Festival.

Some stop in to grab shiny, red packages of premade zongzi, a rice dish wrapped in bamboo leaves often eaten during the Chinese holiday.

Others talk with advocates who are on hand to educate people about the importance of elections. They grab flyers decorated with a colorful dragon boat and something else: a QR code taking them to information about how to vote — all translated into Chinese.

Longtime community leader Vida Lin walks in and flashes her own “I Voted” sticker, having already cast her early ballot in the state primary. Nine years ago, Lin founded the Asian Community Development Council, and since then, she has fought for the very information attendees are getting today: details about how to register to vote and cast a ballot on Election Day, translated into their primary language.

For Lin, these resources help increase civic engagement among one of the fastest-growing demographic groups in the state and nation. That, she says, is the only way her community can gain power.

“If you don’t come out to vote, you don’t get your voices heard, you’re not going to get these issues that we have taken care of,” Lin says. “It’ll be like what happened 30 years ago when I came here with no services, no help, nowhere to go. We’ll be stuck there.”

Nevada, like the nation, is growing ever more diverse. These population shifts bring their own challenges to ensuring democracy is open and available to all American citizens, no matter what language they speak.

This November, under a provision of the federal Voting Rights Act, some 24 million citizens are entitled to assistance that will allow them to vote in their primary language. Section 203 of the act requires communities meeting certain population thresholds and other requirements to provide language assistance to groups that have “suffered a history of exclusion from the political process” — specifically Spanish-speaking, Asian and Indigenous populations.

“This is a way of compensating for past and ongoing discrimination that does occur in the electoral process,” says Angelo Ancheta, a California lawyer and expert on the federal language provisions.

“We’re trying to figure out, not just in voting but in a larger sense, how we incorporate immigrants into the American population. And what do we do as a country for new immigrants, and immigrants who’ve been here for a long time, whose language skills are still not where they might need to be to participate fully in the process?”

But in an ever-changing America, some question whether the federal law is doing its job.

Compliance varies from place to place. Some officials argue it’s too expensive to provide such assistance, or they point to a lack of qualified translators. Others may be caught off guard if sudden shifts in demographics trigger the mandate.

“I remember talking with a county clerk … and as soon as I mentioned my colleagues and I are looking at bilingual ballots, it was almost like he wanted to throw salt over his shoulder — like, ‘Don’t bring that up,’” says Matthew May, who researched Section 203 as part of his work at the Idaho Policy Institute at Boise State University. “He’s thinking about it from an administrative side. … ‘That’s a nightmare to implement as I’m already trying to implement new voter security systems or upgrade the ballot systems.’”

Many argue the federal law doesn’t go far enough and leaves out tens of thousands who may need translations in Arabic, Farsi or other languages not covered by the Voting Rights Act.

And there are places that barely miss the federal government’s threshold to force a community to provide language assistance. Those places include Clark County, Nevada, which fell just 434 citizens short of requiring officials to provide election materials this year in Chinese.

In such places, local groups like Lin’s are stepping in to push for change on their own. “What we love about our community: If there’s a need, we all come together,” Lin says.

‘Turnout does go up’

Congress added Section 203 to the Voting Rights Act in 1975 after determining that citizens belonging to certain language groups had been excluded from participating in elections.

The mandate requires towns, cities and counties to provide assistance in a certain language if the population of that language group meets the following requirements: more than 5% of voting-age citizens, or at least 10,000 people, have limited English proficiency, and the illiteracy rate among those individuals exceeds the national rate.

At the state level, the mandate applies if more than 5% of voting-age citizens statewide have limited English proficiency and the illiteracy rate among those individuals exceeds the national rate. California, Texas and Florida are required to provide voting assistance in Spanish.

Additionally, any city or county containing even part of a Native American reservation must provide language assistance if the population and illiteracy thresholds are met.

Under the law, any election information provided in English must also be provided in the specified language. Generally, that means providing bilingual poll workers on Election Day and translated ballots, sample ballots, voter registration forms and voter information pamphlets.

Every five years, the U.S. Census Bureau releases a list of jurisdictions that must provide language assistance. The latest list came out in 2021 and requires 331 jurisdictions in 30 states to provide language aid through 2026.

From 2000 to 2019, the number of people who speak a language other than English at home went from 44 million to about 68 million. The latter figure is nearly 22% of the entire U.S. population.

During the same period, the number of people who speak Spanish at home grew by more than 15 million. And the number of people who speak Chinese at home increased by more than 1 million. Chinese is now the third most-spoken language in the country, behind English and Spanish.

Many of those covered by the federal language provisions live in battleground states, including Arizona and Georgia, which have seen razor-thin election margins in recent years, Ancheta points out.

“It’s not conclusive, but there’s a fair amount of research that says turnout does go up and registration goes up when you have materials available in another language,” he says.

Another battleground state, Wisconsin, saw the largest increase in covered jurisdictions on the current Census Bureau list, going from three to 50. Forty-four of those must provide assistance in the language of the Ho-Chunk Nation.

But not all such communities adhere to the requirements. In at least 50 cases since 1978, the U.S. Department of Justice has sued counties or cities to enforce the language requirements.

In one of the latest cases, the department alleged that Pawtucket, Rhode Island, had failed to provide required translations and enough bilingual poll workers to assist Spanish-speaking voters. The Hispanic population in Rhode Island grew by 4 percentage points in the 2010s, and in 2020, it made up nearly a quarter of the population of Pawtucket, the state’s fourth-largest city.

Under a tentative agreement, the city has pledged to use a certified translator, provide all election information in both English and Spanish, and assign at least one bilingual election official to each of its 28 precincts. City officials did not return messages from News21.

In other instances, advocacy organizations have sued to ensure communities provide the required help. In Alaska, groups have sought to enforce Section 203 in sprawling rural areas that are home mostly to Alaska Natives, many of whom still speak their native languages.

In 2007, the American Civil Liberties Union of Alaska and the Native American Rights Fund sued the state and the city of Bethel on behalf of four elders whose primary language was Yup’ik, arguing officials had failed to provide the required materials or bilingual poll workers. The population in the Bethel region is 84% Indigenous.

Elders are the most consistent voters in Alaska Native communities, says Michelle Sparck, Alaska director of Get Out the Native Vote, a nonpartisan voter education group.

“We should move mountains to make it easier for them,” Sparck says.

Alaska settled the case and agreed to follow the law, but the fight didn’t end there. A few years later, Alaska Native voters in three neighboring communities claimed the state had again failed to provide the required language assistance, including a translated version of the state’s voter guide.

“Alaska Native language speakers were only receiving a small subset of the information,” says Megan Condon, an attorney with the Native American Rights Fund. “They might get a notice about when and where the election was going to be, but there wouldn’t be the same information regarding questions on the ballot.”

A settlement, reached in 2015, required election observers at polling locations and established a list of language assistance requirements to ensure the state meets its obligations.

“Since then, we have been … working really hard to provide all these materials,” says Wild Iris Anderson, the state’s language assistance compliance manager. “It really just kind of kick-started Alaska’s language accessibility.”

Last year, a state district court determined officials have still failed to provide effective language assistance and extended the agreement through 2026.

Some election officials say funding shortages make it difficult to meet the federal requirements. Gila County, Arizona, which contains parts of the Fort Apache, San Carlos Apache and Tonto Apache reservations, is required to provide assistance in the Apache language, but the county has operated without a translator and outreach worker for about two years.

“We just simply don’t have deep pockets to provide the pay commensurate with positions,” said county Elections Director Eric Mariscal.

Other officials reject the idea of providing translation help, arguing that voters in America should vote in English only.

Several years ago in Elko County, Nevada, a Democratic official asked the all-Republican County Commission to consider providing Spanish ballots even though federal law doesn’t require it in the county, where nearly 11% of voting-age citizens speak Spanish at home. The commissioners rejected the idea. Most cited budget concerns, but Commissioner Rex Steninger had other reasons.

“This is America; we speak English,” he said in the meeting. “The immigrants to this country need to assimilate and join us.”

In an email to News21, Steninger says, “I still feel that English is our official language and voters should be able to read a ballot printed in English.”

For more than 20 years now, Iowans have been locked in a battle over whether the state can provide voter registration forms in both English and Spanish.

At issue is a 2002 law that requires all official documents to be produced in English. The law provided an exception to protect citizens’ constitutional rights; despite that, a judge in 2008 prohibited the state from using languages other than English on voter registration forms.

In 2021, the League of United Latin American Citizens of Iowa filed a lawsuit challenging the directive. The case is still pending with the state Supreme Court. The state argues providing materials “in a language other than English is not necessary to secure the right to vote.”

Ancheta, the California lawyer, says that argument is shortsighted.

“There are plenty of folks who are U.S. citizens who came in as seniors, or they’re older, and their ability to acquire English skills is more challenging,” he says, particularly when trying to navigate something like a complicated ballot initiative.

“They’re Americans, just like everybody else,” Ancheta adds. “Giving them a fair shake because they need a little bit of help … is a relatively minor governmental burden.”

‘We welcome you all’

Those whose first language is not English say the importance of voting in their primary language goes beyond ensuring they feel comfortable at the polls; it’s about helping them belong in a country that too often leaves them feeling like outsiders.

Voting rights advocate Lin was born in California after her parents moved to the U.S. from China for a better life. Her father was a dishwasher; her mother worked long days in a sewing sweatshop to make ends meet.

Lin moved to Las Vegas 30 years ago to help her extended family through a hard time. She began selling insurance, and to get to know the Asian community, she joined several groups. It was then, she says, that she saw how Asian people were excluded from civic participation.

Growing up, Lin’s family had received support from a San Francisco Asian community center. In Las Vegas, she noticed a lack of such support. So in 2015, after Lin sold her insurance agency, she started the Asian Community Development Council. The same year, she obtained a small grant to fund voter registration drives.

“What we did changed the dynamic of Nevada for our Asian population,” she says. “We helped our community build power.”

In Nevada, the portion of residents who speak a language other than English at home grew by nearly 26% in the 2010s. Today, more than 16,000 households have at least one person who speaks Chinese at home; in more than 5,000 of those, no one older than 13 speaks English well. Nearly 94% of the limited-English households are in Clark County, the state’s largest and home to Las Vegas.

The Voting Rights Act requires Clark County to provide election materials only in Spanish and Filipino. So, local organizations stepped up to fill the gap.

In 2022, All Voting is Local, a nonpartisan voting rights organization, partnered with the Asian Community Development Council to produce a voting guide in Chinese. Translated by members of Lin’s organization, the guide provided information on statewide races and ballot initiatives, along with information about how to vote. The group distributed about 10,000 copies.

Last year, All Voting is Local partnered with Lin’s group again to advocate for a bill that would have lowered the population threshold for counties to provide translated materials to 5,000, a level the Chinese-speaking population in Clark County far exceeds. The bill proposed setting aside nearly $450,000 in state funding for the effort.

There are laws that set a lower threshold for language assistance in states such as California and Colorado, but in Nevada, Gov. Joe Lombardo vetoed the bill, saying state laws “sufficiently accomplish the goal of ensuring language accessibility in accordance with federal law.”

The two groups then sought help at the local level, pushing Clark County to provide materials in Chinese voluntarily. The county agreed, and in January, ahead of the state’s presidential primaries, the county released voter resources in Chinese on its website.

Now that Chinese speakers can access voter information in their language, Lin’s group is working to ensure they know such resources exist. From registering people to vote at casinos or hip-hop clubs to educating the community at celebrations such as the Dragon Boat Festival, Lin has one message for hesitant voters.

“I ask them: Why did you come to America?” she says. “Or why did your parents come to America? Or your ancestor, right? For a better life. And if you don’t have your voice heard, what’s the point?”

Now, Lin hopes to expand the services available to her community and continue advocating for more languages to be available, both for voting and on items such as prescription bottles.

“Tell us how much it costs to do something, and we will put it together ourselves,” she says.

Lin wants to remind people in her community that democracy means a “sense of belonging, being part of America.”

“For us to be really American, we have to open up and say, ‘We welcome you all,’” she says. “That is the reason why this country is so strong.”

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News21 reporter Juanita Hurtado Huérfano contributed to this story. This report is part of “Fractured,” an examination of the state of American democracy produced by Carnegie-Knight News21.