Language accommodation for voting – or a lack thereof – could swing 20 congressional elections this November, according to a new report published Monday in The Nation.
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Language accommodation for voting – or a lack thereof – could swing 20 congressional elections this November, according to a new report published Monday in The Nation.
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The Hispanic and Asian populations in Bowling Green, Kentucky, have more than doubled since the turn of the century. Fourteen percent of the city’s residents are originally from another country, giving it the highest percentage of foreign-born citizens in the state.
Calls from limited-English speakers to dispatch and other city services come in high volume.
“Daily – I would say multiple times every day,” said Amelia Bowen, Bowling Green Police Communication Manager, in an interview with news station WBKO-13. “We can’t staff someone 24 hours a day that would be able to meet the whole community’s language needs. So LanguageLine breaks that barrier and gives us the instant access we need to help everyone in the community.”
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The elections office in Potter County, Texas, knew they had a problem after the 2016 Presidential election.
“We know that we have voters who are citizens (who are) eligible to vote and registered to vote, but if they don’t understand the language they may not actually come to vote,” Potter County Elections Administrator Melynn Huntley said in this recent video from KFDA News Channel 10 in Amarillo. “(After 2016) we realized we had a gap, particularly with American Sign Language and Somali.”
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