Massachusetts is home to 223,244 naturalized citizens who speak English “less than well.” These 200,000+ New Americans deserve the same access to casting a ballot and having a voice in the democratic process.
The Census Bureau published the list of Voting Rights Act Section 203 jurisdictions on December 8, 2021. Section 203 mandates that a jurisdiction must provide language assistance to voters if more than five (5) percent of voting-age citizens are members of a single-language minority group and do not “speak or understand English adequately enough to participate in the electoral process,” and if the rate of those citizens who have not completed the fifth grade is higher than the national rate of voting-age citizens who have not completed the fifth grade.
Massachusetts has 20 jurisdictions that meet these thresholds and must provide language access to all voters across the municipality. (Lowell is counted twice since two language minority groups meet the threshold.)
Spanish: Boston, Chelsea, Clinton, Everett, Fitchburg, Holyoke, Lawrence, Leominster, Lowell, Lynn, Methuen, Revere, Salem, Southbridge, Springfield, Worcester
Chinese: Malden, Quincy
Khmer (Cambodian): Lowell
Vietnamese: Randolph
Implementing VRA Section 203 in these jurisdictions requires:
Hiring bilingual poll workers or interpreters at every polling location
Hiring permanent bilingual elections department staffers
Providing fully bilingual ballots
Distributing bilingual outreach materials
Targeting outreach and information sessions
Hiring professional translators for bilingual digital information on elections
Training the elections department on voting rights law and discrimination
Creating clear, rapid resonse systems to discrimination or lack of access
Collecting feedback from LEP residents to improve voting
These are necessary measures to avoid voting rights violations and subsequent litigation. However, the federal government does not provide funding to carry out these measures. Without funding, many municipalities unintentionally cut corners, and naturalized immigrant voters are disenfranchised.