Election Reform Briefing: Translating the Vote--The Impact of the Language Minority Provision of the Voting Rights Act
In the 21 years since Congress first amended the Voting Rights Act to ensure access to ballots for non-English speakers, the electoral process has been opened up to hundreds of thousands of voters.
While the implementation of the Language Minority Provision has potentially opened up the voting process to millions of new voters, it has also created a unique set of challenges for those who administer elections. Even as leaders of minority-language organizations praise the ability to offer voting materials in multiple languages, election officials in some of the affected jurisdictions ponder the impact of implementing — or in some cases side-stepping — the federal requirements.
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