The federal Voting Rights Act is set to expire in 2006, and with it, requirements that counties supply the voter with a ballot in whatever language they may speak.
As could be expected, Seattle and King County, where they “Count Any Vote”, liberals are up in arms at the prospect of losing the non-English speaking, and probably illegal, votes.
Local liberal (or maybe he’s a “Progressive”) blogger, Goldy at HorsesAss.Org declares that “English Only Ballots are Un-American”.
He uses as an example, his Great-Grandmother who he says “emigrated from Eastern Europe as a teen, worked hard all her life, raised a family, helped start and run a small retail shop that fed and clothed three generations… and mostly spoke Yiddish until her dying day”.
She ran a retail shop for upwards of 60 years, paying taxes and following the myriad of local, state and federal regulations, but she couldn’t vote in English?
I think that maybe Goldy is rose-tinting his memories of his “Bubbie” so that he can prove his point, which is truly sad. I mean, if you can’t come up with a good argument for the fact that English is the optimum local language, something that is necessary if one wants to get ahead in this country, and that having to vote only in English provides another incentive for a person to learn it before they become a citizen, instead of isolating a person in their ethnic community, then don’t make up tall tales about your relatives that can’t survive even a cursory examination.
They won’t be able to buy coerced votes from immigrant blocs!
Do I need to tell you how angry my wife’s parents were when they saw that King County provides ballots in their native tongue? I won’t even get into it, but it wasn’t pretty.
How many languages does “Goldy” publish his blog in?