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IndiaWest — California’s Los Angeles County, Cook County in Illinois and Queens

County in New York have been ordered to provide voting assistance to Indian Americans.

Also, Hamtramck, a city of about 22,400 residents in Wayne County, Michigan, will be required to provide voting help for its residents of Bangladeshi origin.

It is the first time that any languages spoken in the nation’s South Asian communities have been included in the language assistance provision (Section 203) of the 1975 federal Voting Rights Act.

The assistance includes translations of voter materials and ballots, absentee voting accommodation and interpreters at polling places.

The choice of which of the Asian Indian languages will be required is to be determined by the U.S. Justice Department, consulting with the U.S. Census Bureau, community agencies and local election officials.

The federal government has ordered a total of 248 counties and other political jurisdictions to provide bilingual ballots to minority groups who speak limited or no English.

That number is slightly less than a decade ago, after the 2000 Census, when 296 counties and jurisdictions were covered.

In Alameda County, for example, voter help must be provided in upcoming elections to Hispanic, Chinese, Filipino and Chinese voters.

In Los Angeles County, communities receiving language-based assistance, in addition to Asian Indians, include the Hispanic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Filipino, Vietnamese and the Other Asian (not specified) communities.

The U.S. Census Bureau made the determination for the jurisdictions that needed language assistance.

Catherine M. McCully, chief, Census Redistricting Office, told India-West that her agency used data from the 2010 Census, the American Community Surveys and other demographic resources.

According to Census Bureau criteria, language assistance must be provided “if more than five percent of voting age citizens belong to the language minority group and are limited English proficient” (or if more than 10,000 voting age citizens belong to the language minority group and are limited-English proficient) and, “using ACS 2005-09 estimates, the rate of total voting age citizens that are limited-English proficient and have less than a 5th grade education is higher than the national rate.”

Localities where Indian Americans constitute a significant share of the population, such as Santa Clara, Alameda and Sutter counties and counties in New Jersey, for example, likely did not qualify for language assistance due to a high English literacy rate, low rate of citizenship or not enough voting age residents, or a combination of all three factors.

“We’re ecstatic that more Asian Americans will be able to exercise their right to vote – and that the voting process will accommodate an increasingly diverse electorate,” said Glenn D.

Magpantay, director of the Democracy Program at the New York-based Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund.

Magpantay told India-West that the Justice Department directive is immediately in effect but that practically speaking, advocacy groups will expect election officials to aim for next year’s presidential primaries to implementation the law. He said the mandate is “very, very significant.”

Magpantay said he expects the languages in the South Asian communities to be Gujarati, Bengali and Punjabi. It will certainly be Bengali in Hamtramck.

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Richard Springer for IndiaWest

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