Colorado Rep. Mike Coffman (R) is pushing legislation to repeal the part of the 1973 Voting Rights Act that allows districts with heavy populations of non-English speakers to print ballots in multiple languages.
“Since proficiency in English is already a requirement for U.S. citizenship, forcing cash-strapped local governments to provide ballots in a language other than English makes no sense at all,” Coffman said, according to the Denver Post.
Coffman said Wednesday that his legislation would repeal Section 203 of the Voting Rights Act, which requires states or districts to provide bilingual voting materials if more than 10,000 or more than 5% of voters “are members of a single language minority and are limited-English proficient,” or if the illiteracy of members of the language minority is higher than the national average.
“Among other factors,” Section 203 says, “the denial of the right to vote of such minority group citizens is ordinarily directly related to the unequal educational opportunities afforded them resulting in high illiteracy and low voting participation.”
Coffman argues that this portion of the Act is an unfunded federal mandate that is often burdensome to districts that must translate election materials.
Elena Nunez, the program director of Colorado Common Cause, told the Post: “We are talking about U.S. citizens, whether they were born here or not.”
