Gwinnett: We're ready for Spanish-speaking voters

Gwinnett’s fifirst election season offering voter assistance in both English and Spanish officially begins next week, and the county says it’s ready.

Or “listo,” if you’d rather. “Everything that we have done, we have done it 100 percent,” said Sylvia King, who was hired by the elections division to help lead the transition to bilingual voter assistance. “Sowe are ready for elections.”

In Dec. 2016, the U.S. Census Bureau gave Gwinnett County — which has a population that’s more than 20 percent Hispanic — a new designation under Section 203 of the federal Voting Rights Act. It requires jurisdictions to provide bilingual ballot access if more than 5

percent or 10,000citizens of voting age are members of a single language minority

and have difficulty speaking English.

“Ballot access” includes everything from registration forms and website information to Spanish-speaking

poll workers.

It has been more than a year since the designation was handed down, and Gwinnett has long been compli

ant with several aspects of its mandate, but it has not yet had a general election under the new rules.

That changes Monday, when advance in-person voting starts for the primary and nonpartisan races that will be decided May 22.

Voters who showup at the Gwinnett elections offiffice in Lawrenceville— which is the county’s only advance voting location for the fifirst two weeks of the early period — will start the process like normal. But once they insert their cards into the voting machines, theywill be asked whether they want a ballot in English or Spanish.

If they need assistance, they’ll be able to ask a poll worker who speaks English. Or one who speaks Spanish.

Election director Lynn Ledford told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution earlier this year that the goal was to fifind 350 Spanish- speaking poll workers in all, a number thatwould provide two such workers at each of the county’s 156 voting precincts as well as about two dozen more to staffff the eight locations the county eventually opens during early voting.

She said Thursday that the county was “on target” for primary season poll workers.

“It’s been a great opportunity,” Ledford said. “It’s been a big challenge, but we’ve had the support we need to make it successful.”

TYLER ESTEP / TYLER. ESTEP@AJC. COM Gwinnett election director Lynn Ledford shows a voting machine’s Spanishlanguage ballot.