A Modern Day “Literacy Test” That Threatens Our Democratic Rights (Greenlining Institute)

By Michelle Romero, The Greenlining Institute

Just 50 years ago, before the Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965, discrimination and intimidation tactics such as poll taxes and literacy tests were widely used to prevent voters of color from exercising their fundamental democratic rights. In California, literacy tests were specifically used to discourage Chinese and other foreign-born citizens from voting. No doubt we’ve made progress since then. For example, we now require bilingual poll workers and translated voting materials.
And yet, despite the progress we’ve made, there remains the simple truth that ballot initiative petitions are still available only in English. In a state as diverse as California, that’s simply unacceptable.

Earlier this week, my colleague Jose Sanchez testified before the California Senate Elections Committee in support of Senate Bill 654. SB 654, authored by Senators Leno and Padilla, would require the title and summary of ballot initiatives to be translated on petitions. Last year, we came close to enacting similar legislation known as SB 1233, but it was vetoed by Governor Jerry Brown. This year we think we can get it passed.

California has more than 2.6 million eligible voters who don’t speak English very well. For these citizens, English-only ballot measure petitions are sort of like a modern-day literacy test, preventing them from participating in the process of deciding what ballot measures will qualify for the ballot and be put before voters for approval or rejection.

The initiative process is a people’s process (at least in theory). It gives ordinary citizens the power to make and unmake state laws, and recall their elected officials. The process of gathering petition signatures is a crucial part of this process. Without translated materials available, limited-English voters are a high risk of manipulation by paid signature-gatherers who speak the voter’s language but misstate the details of the petition.

We have a duty to ensure all our citizens can exercise their fundamental democratic rights, and that doesn’t just mean voting. Our communities should be integrated into the whole process, not just part of it. We need our ballot measure process to be consistent with other voter protections concerning language access.

We already provide language accessible voting materials, it’s time we have language accessible initiative petitions.

California’s limited-English eligible voter population makes up more than 11 percent of our total eligible voter population. Look down at your two hands and 10 fingers. Imagine you were missing a finger. That’s about how many we’re missing. Unacceptable, right? We think so.

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Via Greenlining.org