She'll Oppose Extension of Foreign-Language Ballots Provision of Voting Rights Act

VIEW TESTIMONY

(Sterling, VA) At the Committee’s request, Center for Equal Opportunity chairman Linda Chavez will testify tomorrow before the Senate Judiciary Committee.  She will urge the Committee not to extend Section 203 of the Voting Rights Act, which requires many jurisdictions to print ballots in foreign languages.

“Section 203 is a bad statute for four reasons,” says Ms. Chavez.  “First, it balkanizes our country by sending the message that learning English is not an important part of being an American.  Second, it facilitates voter fraud, since generally in order to vote you must become a citizen, and in order to become a citizen you must learn English.  Third, printing these ballots is a needless expense--an unfunded mandate where the federal government requires local jurisdictions to waste their taxpayers’ money.  Finally, Section 203 is unconstitutional, because there is no connection between it and preventing illegal discrimination of any kind.”

Ms. Chavez pointed out that, if the Senate reauthorizes Section 203, it will be acting inconsistently with its own recent vote that declared English to be the “national language.”  She also noted that the Bush administration, which has also recently emphasized the importance of recent immigrants learning English, ought to be opposing the reauthorization of Section 203; it is not, however.

The Center for Equal Opportunity is a nonprofit educational and research foundation that focuses on issues of race and ethnicity.  In particular, it studies civil rights, bilingual education, and immigration and assimilation issues.