News

New York Times, February 7, 2006

“Saying they were fed up after ‘many years of frustration’ in dealing with the New York City Board of Elections, four Asian-American voters’ organizations filed a federal lawsuit yesterday to force the board to provide properly translated voting materials and the required number of interpreters in future elections.

The suit, filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan, cited a host of obstacles encountered by Chinese-American and Korean-American voters who do not speak much English when they went to cast their ballots in the elections last November. The Chinese characters on the ballots were too tiny to read without a magnifying glass. Some candidates’ names were translated wrong…”

“Leaders of the voting organizations and their lawyers, from the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, said they had been sending reports for years to the Board of Elections citing elections incidents where confused or cowed Asian-American voters were turned away or had to cast special paper ballots because they did not understand the voting procedures. Sometimes the board responded, but not often enough, the leaders said.”

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