Under law, Hays must offer Spanish ballots, too
Surprise, surprise. Lake County Supervisor of Elections Alan Hays doesn’t want to bother providing ballots and the same other materials in Spanish that English speakers can obtain from his office.
Just like he didn’t want to bother having to wait for people to get on and off public buses when he was a state senator — the Umatilla Republican got caught behind a bus one day in town so he filed a bill to make it illegal for them to stop on a public roadway. Just like he didn’t want to follow a clear voter mandate to spend $750 million a year to fix environmental disasters, so he led a successful effort to hijack all but about 1 percent of the money to feed bloated state bureaucracy and keep corporate welfare flowing. (A lawsuit continues on that one.)
Just like he tried unsuccessfully to prohibit members of the public from looking at applications or attending meetings to vet those seeking jobs as president, provost or dean of any college in the state system. What a coincidence — the retired dentist wanted to be a college president at the time.
Hays has a long legislative history of contempt for the voter, a preference for backroom politics and a disdain for anyone not just like him — white and Baptist.
Now, Hays and 31 other supervisors statewide — Brevard is the only other Central Florida county — are the targets of a lawsuit accusing them of failing to follow the federal Voting Rights Act requiring election officials to pony up the materials that would help Spanish speakers vote.
Hays, a longtime right-wing extremist, of course, doesn’t want to do it. He asked a Sentinel reporter why the entire county should “incur that kind of expense” when there’s a “more economical way” to help Spanish speakers vote.
The answer is simple: Because it’s the law — the one that Hays swore to uphold when he took office. To do anything else is just a sly way of repressing minority voters.
Hays’ plans would give Spanish speakers short shrift by ignoring the Voting Rights Act, which requires any county where at least 5 percent of the population is not proficient in English to provide all materials in the other language, which typically is Spanish. The suit was filed Aug. 16 by LatinoJustice and other advocacy organizations.
That’s particularly important in Florida this year because of the big influx of Puerto Ricans — Hays should try to remember that they, too, are Americans — who fled here after Hurricane Maria. Lake alone has some 3,052 eligible voters don’t speak English “very well,” according to a calculation provided by University of Florida professor Daniel Smith.
Hays had a bunch of lame ob-
jections for failing to do what’s right and follow the law.
Here’s a sample: “I find the printing of both languages on the paper to be confusing for almost everyone,” he stated.
Awww — he’s just protecting the poor dumb voter. Somehow, Orange County residents have managed to muddle through bilingual ballots for the last 30 years without chaos or masses of madly lost voters scurrying frantically from precinct to precinct.
Osceola has been doing it for more than 15 years, and Seminole is starting this year. And somehow, all that furniture bought at Ikea gets put together despite instructions in a half dozen languages. OK, maybe Ikea is a bad example. Even the English instructions make you want to take a flamethrower to a small dresser.
Over the last decade, hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans, especially, have moved to Central Florida. Regardless of how Hays, 72, feels about this rapidly changing demographic, these folks are Americans, just like he is.
The U.S. Department of Justice states on its website that the U.S. is a “diverse land” and that “many Americans rely heavily on languages other than English.” The 1975 change in the Voting Rights Act to require they get ballots in minority languages is so they can be “informed voters and participate in our representative democracy.”
That’s what everyone should want.
The argument is often heard that immigrants should learn English. Of course they should. That would be the ideal in a melting pot society. But since this is still America, it’s not required. And those fleeing a natural disaster simply haven’t had enough time.
Hays shouldn’t consider spending taxpayer money to fight this lawsuit. It is futile, and it is wrong. He should agree to comply with the law and move on. Spanish-speakers are coming in droves, and that’s not going to change.