Tuesday, August 19, 2003
DOJ Blocks CA Bilingual Ballot Challenge
The Department of Justice announced that plans for fewer Spanish-speaking poll workers are not a reason to block the October 7th California recall election. A judge had ordered DOJ to sign off on the plan by August 29th.
All of this bilingual bickering is the product of a lawsuit by the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund.
DOJ's swift action is a pleasant surprise, given that the Bush Justice Department has been enforcing bilingual voting requirements more stringently than Clinton ever dared, most recently against a school district in New York's Suffolk County:
[T]he consent decree requires the Brentwood school district to appoint a Spanish Language Assistance Coordinator to ensure that Spanish-speaking citizens receive full and complete information in Spanish about all stages of the electoral process; investigate and remove poll workers who have engaged in hostile treatment of Spanish-speaking and/or Hispanic voters; and provide sufficient numbers of poll officials who are bilingual in Spanish and English to assist voters.
Next hurdle: on Wednesday, a different judge is expected to rule on a lawsuit brought by the ACLU of Southern California which demands the recall election be postponed because, claims the ACLU, punch card ballots discriminate against minorities.
Why all the hurdles? Arnold Steinberg put it best on NRO (pre-blackout):
No doubt Clinton has been briefed on the federal lawsuit by the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund (MALDEF) and NAACP. The dismissed lawsuits challenging the recall were in state court. It's possible a federal court could still intervene. But it must soon: This costly election is on the fast track. If the feds move the recall special election to coincide with the March presidential primary, then, it will turn into Bush-bashing by the Democrats, too long a campaign for Arnold, and long enough for the recall movement to collapse.
Anti-English groups like MALDEF seem flatly terrified of democracy. Proof? MALDEF is also suing to block an October 7th vote on the Ward Connerly anti-racial classification initiative.
The Justice Department's ruling allowing the California recall to go forward is good news for the democratic process, even though I still believe that when the election is over, a Democrat will still govern California.
|posted by Jim on 1:14 PM|
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