It's primary day: about those languages

“Everybody I speak to says how horrible it is,” [Donald Trump] said during an event at the border on Thursday. “Nobody [can] explain to me how allowing millions of people from places unknown, from countries unknown, who don’t speak languages — we have languages coming into our country, we have nobody that even speaks those languages. They are truly foreign languages. Nobody speaks them.” -- Washington Post

Okay, we know that Donald is both clueless and bigoted when it comes to people who speak a language other than English -- though if he ever had an English teacher, she might wonder she'd made any impact on his ability to construct meaning in his native tongue.

Meanwhile, here in California, the legislature is considering a bill to ensure that all the citizens of this state can express themselves by casting a ballot. Calmatters reports:

California lawmakers are considering a bill that would expand language assistance and election services to immigrants who don’t speak English fluently, but a group representing voter registrars throughout the state says it will cost counties too much money.

California has the nation’s highest proportion of households that speak languages other than English. Nearly 3 million voting age Californians have limited English knowledge.

Assemblymember Evan Low, the Cupertino Democrat who co-authored Assembly Bill 884, said he hopes it will increase voter participation and strengthen democracy in California.



“California is one of the most diverse states and leads the nation in language diversity,” he said, “so it is important that we lead the way to providing in-language ballots and voting materials to reduce barriers and enfranchise more Californians.”

The bill, which passed the Assembly in late January and is before the Senate, would require California’s Secretary of State to identify the languages spoken by at least 5,000 voting-age individuals in a county who don’t speak English fluently, including groups not covered by current federal voting rights laws, such as Middle Eastern or African immigrants.



The Secretary of State would then have to provide language assistance, including a toll-free hotline and funding for county language coordinators, in areas where the need is most acute.

I can easily image that, to many harried election administrators, Low's bill looks like one more underfunded mandate. But, in my experience, people who do those jobs usually want everyone who is eligible to have a chance to vote, so they'll want to make this work.

... “We want voters to trust the government and that boils down to a voter in any community being able to understand what is happening in their own community,” said Pedro Hernandez, a policy director at California Common Cause, which cosponsored the bill. 

This is the great California experiment, something to cherish on primary day.