House to Consider Dropping Bilingual Ballot Requirements

King/Miller/Brown-Waite/Istook/Bachus Amendment to be considered today

This afternoon, the House of Representatives will consider the King/Miller/Brown-Waite/Istook/Bachus Amendment to H.R. 9, which would strip the well-meaning Voting Rights Act of its divisive and costly multilingual ballot requirements.

“The provision of multilingual ballots is at odds with legal tradition,” said U.S. English Chairman Mauro E. Mujica, who testified in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee in opposition to multilingual ballots last month. “Under U.S. law, nearly all immigrants must demonstrate English language proficiency to be eligible for naturalization. If English is a necessary condition for citizenship, and citizenship is a necessary condition for legal voting, then the purpose of foreign language ballots must be questioned.”

The multilingual ballot provision is the most controversial part of the Voting Rights Act, which was originally enacted without language stipulations in 1965. Ten years later, Congress reauthorized the act to require certain jurisdictions to provide ballots in the native language of certain minorities who reached a given population threshold. Currently, more than 250 counties and political subdivisions in 30 states are required by the Department of Justice to print ballots in a language other than English. The cost for these translations, required in up to six languages, is expected to run in the tens of millions of dollars in some locations.

Under the Amendment to be offered this afternoon, states and localities could chose to offer translations, but they would no longer be subject to federal mandate. The Amendment maintains the existing federal right for a voter to bring a person of their choice into the voting booth in order to translate.

“Though multilingual ballots may have originated with the best of intentions, we should make the decision that binds us for the next generation on the conditions of today, not the conditions of a generation ago,” Mujica continued. “Today, this mandate offers selective benefits at the cost of a Balkanizing message – a message we cannot continue to deliver.

“I ask members of Congress to vote yes on King/Miller/Brown-Waite/Istook/Bachus Amendment to promote a policy that makes legal and economic sense, and one which emphasizes what voting and being an American is all about.”

U.S. English, Inc. is the nation's oldest and largest non-partisan citizens' action group dedicated to preserving the unifying role of the English language in the United States. Founded in 1983 by the late Sen. S.I. Hayakawa of California, U.S. English, Inc. (www.usenglish.org) now has more than 2 million members.