FYI, LA Times 7/22/05 Federal Officials monitor Voting

[rumpel]

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-voting22jul22,1,6958345.story?coll=la-headlines-california

Federal Officials Monitor Voting
The Justice Department checked polls during the L.A. mayoral elections to determine if ballots were provided in multiple languages.

By Rong-Gong Lin II, Times Staff Writer

The Justice Department has sent monitors to polling places in Los Angeles this year to determine whether the city is violating the federal Voting Rights Act by not providing official ballots in languages other than English.

Los Angeles prints sample ballots in English as well as Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Tagalog and Vietnamese. But at polling places, the official ballot is available only in English, and voters are asked to use their sample ballot as a guide to translate.

City Clerk Frank Martinez said he thought the city's procedures complied with the Voting Rights Act, which requires that any jurisdiction that has a substantial number of people who speak a language other than English provide all voting materials in that language.

But in other audits this year, the U.S. Justice Department concluded that three smaller cities in Los Angeles County violated the law by printing official ballots only in English; it reached agreements with the communities to provide official ballots in other languages in the future.

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[Raster]

1. You know, that's great. Glad to hear the Justice Department is making

sure everyone in L.A. gets to vote. Maybe they can make a swing through Ohio and Florida before 2006 and 2008. The won't even need as many translators. Just a few Jimmy Carters.

[wli]

2. they need to check for a lot more than multiple languages

like, say, fraud and voter suppression (the sleazy "challenging" garbage)