Coming Soon To Your Elections - More Multilingual Ballots

[Ayatollahgondola]

-----Original Message-----
From: Davi Rodrigues [mailto[email protected]]
Sent: Monday, August 23, 2010 11:40 AM
To: Voter Info
Subject: Questions

Is it possible for citizens to obtain voting ballots that do not contain
the confusing spanish language on them?

______________________________________________

Hi Mr. Rodrigues-

We are mandated by the US Department of Justice, under the Voting Rights
Act, to provide election materials in certain languages depending on how
many people per county list that language on their census forms.

As of now, Sacramento County is mandated to provide English and Spanish
but with the most recent census, there is the strong possibility that we
will have to provide more election materials in different languages.
We did try separating the two languages a couple of years ago and it
caused extra work for our department and a tremendous extra cost to the
county, as we had to ensure that we had enough election materials for
all. It is significantly cheaper for the county to combine the English
and Spanish languages onto one ballot or sample ballot booklet.

We realize it can get confusing with the two languages side by side.
Unfortunately, at this time, the county does not have the extra funds to
print and send out separate languages. It is possible, depending on the
newest census results, we might have to provide more languages. If that
happens, we will have to look at separating them all and find the money
for it somewhere.

I hope this has answered your question. If you have any other questions
or concerns, please don't hesitate to contact me.

Sincerely,

Courtney Bailey
Election Assistant - County of Sacramento
(916) 875-6024
[email protected]

So there you have it: Immigration costs you dearly. Not just in monetary terms either. So to get a ballot printed in the official language of California only, we have to have enough foreign language speakers to warrant seperate ballot material. There's a catch 22 for you. But of course the real catch is illegals. Drop anchors here that are native born citizens who don't speak English; are taught in spanish, and are encouraged to retain their spanish speaking roots.