Federal observers from the United States Department of Justice
will be monitoring the voting process in San Benito County for the
March 2 election.
Federal observers from the United States Department of Justice will be monitoring the voting process in San Benito County for the March 2 election.
The examiners are part of the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, Voting Section, which watches election day activities under the Voting Rights Act.
Their focus will center around the county’s compliance with minority voting rights in accordance with federal law.
John Albert Russ, an attorney from the Department of Justice, interviewed several community members and government officials last week, said Mickie Luna, Hollister resident and state president for the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC).
“We are very happy that they’re coming in,” Luna said. “We feel it’s time that somebody else sees what’s going on and gives us a report.”
One of LULAC’s attorneys, Joaquin Avila, who is also a professor of law at UCLA, is always in contact with the Department of Justice and passes on LULAC’s concerns to them, Luna said.
“They were concerns that caught the ear of the DOJ,” she said.
Russ sat down with a committee of about nine LULAC members who deal in voter rights and discussed some issues of concerns – such as not enough Latinos working at the polls, language barriers, and not enough voter information being disseminated in Spanish, Luna said.
“There may be some intimidation going on towards Latino voters,” she said. “They (could be) intimidated by somebody that can’t even spell their name. We get a lot of complaints.”
The observers are part of the Department of Justice’s Voting Section, whose responsibility it is to safeguard the right to vote of certain groups, including racial and language minorities, according to the Department’s Web site.
As described in the Voting Rights Act, the observers monitor the election day process in response to concerns about racial discrimination in the voting process, and provide information about compliance with bilingual election procedures.
But San Benito County is not the only county in California that the Department of Justice will be monitoring, said County Clerk John Hodges.
Russ told Hodges there hadn’t been any complaints, but that it was more of an outreach project – what the county is doing to properly disseminate information to Spanish-speaking voters, Hodges said.
“I was really surprised, but then I saw that other counties were getting a visit from the federal boys – I guess they’re looking for a job,” Hodges said. “They should be back in Washington doing their jobs. We’re doing a good job out here.”
Russ declined comment, and a public affairs specialist for the Department of Justice did not return phone calls.
During the interview Russ asked Hodges a list of questions: Is the county trying to get poll workers who speak Spanish, is all the information in Spanish, and so on, Hodges said.
“And it was ‘yeah’ all the way through,” he said. “So my comment is, ‘yeah, come on down, watch us. We’re doing everything we can.'”
Currently, all the information the county sends out is in both Spanish and English, including the sample ballot, Hodges said.
The actual ballot is only in English because the county’s voting equipment is not equipped to provide a bilingual version yet, he said.
After the November election, the county will be going to a different style of ballot and a touch screen, which federal law requires to be in place by 2006, Hodges said.
“Then if you want Spanish, you’ve got it,” he said. “We will have everything that is required by the federal government. We do now, except for the ballot itself being both in Spanish and English.”
With such a large Hispanic population living in the county, if there are any kind of voting-right infractions occurring, people should be concerned, Luna said.
“If there is intimidation or violations, we will take some kind of action,” she said. “We will not take a step back at all.”
