King County has apparently given up and outsourced its Elections office to the People's Republic of China
UPDATE: Every ballot mailed out for the April 26 Special Election looked like this one.
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at April 29, 2005 03:28 PM | Email ThisIs it really possible to say "doesn't know beans about elections" with only 5 characters? That's some shorthand!
Posted by: Micajah on April 29, 2005 03:45 PMhttp://uscis.gov/graphics/services/natz/require.htm
I excerpt this section:
Applicants for naturalization must be able to read, write, speak, and understand words in ordinary usage in the English language. Applicants exempt from this requirement are those who on the date of filing:
So my question is if you must be a citizen to vote and to be a citizen you must "...read, write, speak, and understand words in ordinary usage in the English language." Why is this announcement written is any thing other than English?
Before a bunch of folks jump on me for being racist. Let me state clearly I welcome all legal immigrants who me the eligibility requirements set forth in the US Code.
Just like KC elections, I would like the law to be followed. If we don't like the law then by all means lets have the debate and with the due process change the law.
Until then the law is to vote you must understand English. What's so bloody difficult about that?
Posted by: jcm on April 29, 2005 03:46 PMD--O--R--K--!
Posted by: Mr. Cynical on April 29, 2005 04:00 PMThe left regularly ratchets up regulations and bureaucracies to institutionalize the left agenda and in effect cancel the voting power of their opponents. And this voting nonsense is a further effort...marginalize and cancel out the will of the non-left.
And they get offended if we object.
Posted by: scott158 on April 29, 2005 04:32 PM - I count the cars as they pass by the office.
- You drink too much coffee.
- The President must be an American citizen.
I imagine many immigrants can understand simple sentence like this, but might have trouble with the poorly written legalese that plagues many of our ballots. I have trouble with them sometimes.
I noticed that they have Chinese and Spanish materials on the site. Why just those I wonder? We've got a fair sized Russian, Japanese, and Korean population here too.
My favorite form is the complaint form that's in Chinese. I'm tempted to fill it out in English complaining that I can't understand a damn thing on it.
http://www.metrokc.gov/elections/HAVA/HAVAComplaintChinese.pdf
It's a Federal law that needs to be repealed.
Posted by: MikeF on April 29, 2005 05:35 PM"I imagine many immigrants can understand simple sentence like this, but might have trouble with the poorly written legalese that plagues many of our ballots. I have trouble with them sometimes."
That got me thinking - If the initiatives on the ballot are poorly written in English, how can we be sure they are translated appropriately?
Can we really be sure that initiatives written in foreign language are conveying the choice before the voter correctly? Shouldn't they be in one language - English - so that even if they are poorly worded, at least we're sure everyone is on a level playing field and facing the same decision?
Posted by: Larry on April 29, 2005 06:03 PM"The second provision added was Section 203 of the Voting Rights Act..."
"As was the case in 1975 (with President Ford) and 1982 (with President Reagan), the 1992 Amendment was signed into law by a Republican President (Bush) and received broad and bipartisan support in the Congress. For example, during the 1992 Senate Judiciary hearing regarding the extension of the minority language provisions of the Voting Rights Act, Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) stated:
The right to vote is one of the most fundamental of human rights. Unless government assures access to the ballot box, citizenship is just an empty promise. Section 203 of the Voting Rights Act, containing bilingual election requirements, is an integral part of our government's assurance that Americans do have access"
source: http://www.house.gov/judiciary_democrats/dlv40025.htm
Posted by: MikeF on April 29, 2005 06:22 PMBeing somewhat familiar with Immigration procedures, as my wife is a Kyrgyz citizen who is currently going through the process, I know that you can't be a citizen without speaking, reading, and writing english. You also have to take a civics and history test, which after going through the flash cards convinced me that a majority of American schoolkids would fail. The civic and history test is in English. If they can understand and pass that, why would they not be able to understand an initiative measure?
Anyways, I'm firing off an e-mail to Jim "Baghdad" McDermott to see what we can do about getting this repealed. I have little hope that he will agree with my sentiments, but we'll see.
Posted by: Aaron on April 29, 2005 07:34 PMYou non-"diversity" gosh-dern type feller you!!
Those durn no-english speaking personages have rigts too!! (Kofi Annan says)
Just a$$ some of the trolls that come here like JDB or DanW.
Don't de nada me bout no poco dinero muchachos! We may has
to know dey lingo some day dude!
Lease how to say shee -- what up!
The Chinese writing is definitely more pronouced than the English! Wasn't Julia Patterson bragging about working to assist the production of Chinese language on King County ballots?
I wonder if she's now working on the additon of *Felonese* language codes... for the next election ballots?
Well...there ya go!
Incredible!
Posted by: Deborah on April 29, 2005 11:15 PMFolks, it's a federal law that once a minority reaches a certain percentage of the population, allowances must be made for them in county paperwork.
If you don't like it, try to change the federal law. Spanish isn't used because hispanics only account for 5.5% of the county's population. As of the 2000 census, Asians accounted for 10%.
All of these other comments about communists and Jim McDermott and Dean Logan are just completely unnecessary diatribes. You probably could get an English ballot in Denmark if you wanted one. If you couldn't, well, then I guess that's just one reason why we're the best nation on Earth, isn't it?
And yes, it's important to learn English in this country (and even necessary in some circles), but until you find out for sure that Asians voting in King County are people who have lived here (and been citizens) for decades and just refuse to learn the language, save the speculation for the next "vegetative state" case.
English is one of the hardest languages on the planet and I don't begrudge anyone who has trouble with it. After all, I went to school with hundreds of white and black kids who apparently never bothered to learn enough of it to hold a decent conversation, either.
And don't get me started on how the recent immigrants who become citizens know our history better than those of us who were born here.
Conservatives own 2/3 of the three branches of our national government, most of the US Congress and 28 of the 50 governorships. What can any of you possibly still be annoyed about?
I'm sure any Washington state liberal would love to trade Rossi for GWB. Apparently, you folks don't know how good you have it. You lose one shot at governor because Sam Reed won't do a Katherine Harris or Sam Blackwell impression and you act like the communists have taken over the state. Do some research, people. The final vote difference was 133 and it's a fact (Seattle Times mentioned this) that over 22,000 people in this state left that part of the ballot blank. Scream all you want about fraud (which you can't prove) and mistakes (which were admitted and happen during every election), but it's the voters of this state that decided we will never know who should've won. Save your apparently boundless energy for 2006 and 2008. With the war and the economy going the way they are, you will need all of it to keep those Republicans in office.
Sorry, I'm trolling, but the rants here just defy all logic.
Good day to you all.
Posted by: Michael B on July 6, 2005 09:47 AM