Section 203 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) provides: "Whenever any State or political subdivision [covered by the section] provides registration or voting notices, forms, instructions, assistance, or other materials or information relating to the electoral process, including ballots, it shall provide them in the language of the applicable minority group as well as in the English language."
The law covers those localities where there are more than 10,000 or over 5 percent of the total voting age citizens in a single political subdivision (usually a county, but a township or municipality in some states) who are members of a single minority language group, have depressed literacy rates, and do not speak English very well.
Political subdivisions also may be covered through a separate determination for Indian Reservations. Determinations are based on data from the most recent Census, and the determinations are made by the Director of the Census.
Section 203 targets those language minorities that have suffered a history of exclusion from the political process: Spanish, Asian, Native American, and Alaskan Native. The Census Bureau identifies specific language groups for specific jurisdictions. In some jurisdictions, two or more language minority groups are present in numbers sufficient to trigger the Section 203 requirements.
Section 203’s provisions, however, are often critically misunderstood and only partially implemented. The law’s substantial compliance gap stems largely from its complex and fact-specific mandates as well as its requirement that election jurisdictions themselves determine the extent of their own affirmative duties.
In an effort to partially close Section 203’s compliance gap and promote universal enforcement of federal election laws, academics and members of Congress have proposed a requirement that all election jurisdictions report to the local media and the government certain changes to their election laws before those changes take effect.
The proposal needs modification with a general framework to address the low compliance rates of the VRA’s language assistance provisions.
This proposal requires all covered language jurisdictions to publicly present a section 203 compliance plan six months before an election. It represents a cost-effective way to inform election officials of their particularized legal obligations and to more efficiently leverage third-party resources to ensure that the language assistance provisions are consistently and properly enforced.
NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote! Michael H. Drucker
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